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BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF AN ADDRESS BEFORE 

THE SURVIVORS' ASSOCIATION OF THE 

SIXTH REGIMENT, S. C. V., AT THEIR 

REUNION IN CHESTER, S. C, 

AUGUST 4th, 1881. 



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BY WILLIAM E. BOGGS, 

Late Chaplain of the Same. 
[PUBLISHED BY REilUEST.] 



COLUMBIA, S. C. 

I'HINTKl) AT THE PRESBYTERIAN PUBLISniN(4 HOUSE. 



1881. 



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Page 5. 


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Page 10, 


line 34. 


Page 11, 


line 11. 


Page U. 


line 1. 


Page 15, 


line 9. 


Page 18, 


line 20. 


Page 22, 


line 38. 


Page 24, 


line 5. 


Page 25, 


line 8. 


Page 48, 


line 25. 



For "waits," read "awaits." 

For "it raa_y be said, as," read •one may saj 

what." 
Omit "not only." 
For "usual," read "moral."' 
For "discus," read "discuss." 
For "effect," read "relief." 
For "formed," read "found." 
For "debated," read "detected." 
For "oldest," read "older." 
For "glory," read "Glory." 



THE 



SOUTH VINDICATED 



FROM THE 



m l)F llMSi' AID IlLUi : 



BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF AN ADDRESS BEFORE 

THE SURVIVORS' ASSOCIATION OF THE 

SIXTH REGIMENT, S. C. V., AT THEIR 

REUNION IN CHESTER, S. C, 

AUGTTST 4th, 1881. 



// 



!^- 



i 



BY WILLIAM. E. BOGOS, 

Late Chaplain of' the Same. 



COLUMBIA, S. C. 

PRINTKD AT THE PRESBYTERIAN PrBIJSHTNO HOUSE. 



1881. 



30488 



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0Of CONGRi^ 



j^IDIDK^ESS 



BEFORE THE 



SURVIVORS' ASSOCIATION OF TBE SlITH REGIMENT, S, C, 7. 



Comrades and Brothers : Time, that spares nothing that is 
human and mortal, has evidently been making his mark upon 
you since we parted on our return from the fatal field of Appo- 
matox. Gray hairs are shining on many a head. Ever-deepen- 
ino; furrows are bein^ scored on cheek and brow. And, as I look 
once again into your faces, after the long interval of sixteen 
years — years burdened with public griefs and humiliations — the 
pathetic words of Burns come unbidden into my mind: 

"•John Anderson, my jo, .Jolin, when we were first acquent, 
Your locks were like the raven, your l)onnie brow was brent ; 
But now your brow is bold, -John, your locks are like the snow: 
But biessini!;s on your Frosty pow, John Anderson, my jo.'' 

The old command would hardly be able, I imagine, to face, as 
of yore, the icy winds "of Centrcville and Manassas Junction, or 
to bear the fierce sun of summer in the trenches of Petersburg. 
Some of you, I am glad to see, give ample evidence of better 
fare than you had when our good friend, Capt. Love, dealt out 
three-fourths of a pound of musty corn-meal, and a gill of thin 
snrglium molasses, while you dreamed of "hard tack" and raw 
bacon as of luxuries fit for a king! 

So far as the activities of this life are concerned, my brothers, 
it is clear that many of us have seen our best days. We shall 
soon be falling into the "sere and yellow leaf" Death is thin- 
ning our ranks, even in these days of peace. Only to-day have 
I learned with pain that our beloved comrade, Capt. W. S. 
Brand, of Company K, is to bo with us no more in these re- 
unions. A brave and devoted soldier of his country, we can also 
say of him, whar is far better now: 



"Soldier of Christ, well clone! 
Rest from thy loved employ ; 
The battle fousjht, the vict'ry won, 
- Enter thy Master's joy.'' 

Thus, my comrades, are we made to realise 

''That our hearts, thoi!,*;;!) stout and brave, 

Still, like muffled drums, are beatinf; 
Fnneral marches to the grave." 

It is to be hoped that we are getting ready for a sweet rest 
ivhen the march of life is done, and for a joyful awakening at 
the reveille of the great day. 

Right glad I am to meet you, comrades, after these long years 
of separation. The sight of your faces brings back many astir- 
ring recollection of the days "that tried men's souls." Many a 
time have I watched you as you moved down to the conflict, 
until the white shroud of battle hid you from my anxious eyes. 
Some here present I may have lifted, mangled and bleeding, from 
the field to the surgeon's table, where probe and knife had their 
terrible work to do. We have stood together by the hastily-dug 
grave, as we wrapped some brave boy in his blanket, that he 
might rest in the bosom of that mother for whose sake he was 
willing to die. And how can we ever forj^et those hours of holy 
worship — sometimes in the solemn twilight, sometimes by the 
flickering glare of bivouac fires; and again in I'ude sanctuaries 
built by your own hands, along the lines of entrenchment. Mo- 
thinks I can almost hear at this moment the rich clear voice of 
Capt. Brand leading the volume of praise that swelled from your 
hearts to the God of our fathers. I trust that you will not seek 
his blessing less frequently or fervently in your peaceful homes, 
than you did then, in camp and field and hospital. And how 
many times, as I have pored with swelling heart over the deeds 
of heroes rehearsed in story and in song, have I recalled that 
memorable S'th of April, when you learned that, overwhelmed by 
sheer numbers, the grand Army of Northern Virginia had fought 
its last battle. How often, when far away from you, have I seen 
in imagination those faces covered with dust and blackened with 
the smoke of incessant battle, over which tears of agony had 
made their long furrows. And amid the horrible excesses of 



"Reconstruction," I liave often found myself repeating tlie old 
saying : 

"Woe waits a country, when 

She sees the tears of bearded men.'" 

Our commander lias just been good enough to say that you 
luive watched my career with pride and pleasure. It was kind 
in him to say it — kinder still in you to feel it. No man, I am 
sure, in the old organisation, has more cause to love it than I. 
Coming to you, as Gen. Bratton has truly observed, a youth, 
fresh from college, you received me as the ambassador of Christ. 
It is true, as you were told by our commander, that I have seen 
pretty hard service since I left you. But nothing gave me half 
the uneasiness, amid the pestilence-tainted air of Memphis, that 
I suffered for my brave comrades in Virginia, when I seemed to 
feel in my heart the thud and crash of every shot that drew 
blood from you. M}' labors, I may say truly, have everywhere 
been rewarded with kindness and affection. Grave thoughtful 
men and devout women have chosen me as their spiritual teacher. 
But no church can ever take the place that you, ray first flock, 
"the church in the wilderness," as I may call you, have ever 
held in my heart. And when, at my own fireside, I shall speak 
of your brave deeds to m}^ own bright-e3^ed boys, a father's am- 
bition can ask no more for them than that, should they ever be 
put to the test, they shall deserve as well of our reunited country 
as you did of the South. 

But, comrades, while we thus revive old associations of the 
camp and battle-field, there are certain questions which invariably 
came into view, along with these memories. They are questions 
of the right and the wrong, which underlie and interpenetrate 
the history of our old regiment, of the armies to which it belonged, 
and of the whole country and cause for which you battled. There 
are persons amongst us who are nervous about any allusions to 
these questions of right and wrong. "It is all past now," they say, 
"and let the dead past bury its dead issues." Fear gives em- 
phasis to such reasonings with the timid. But questions of prin- 
ciple can neve)' be buried. Like Banquo's ghost, they come 
forth again, and Avill not down at any man's bidding. And, 



6 



Avliocver else may decline to face these questions, it is certain 
that you and I cannot afford to decline. They are questions of 
7i07i07\ "which deeply affect us. It is known to you that multi- 
tudes of good men, not only in the United States, but throughout 
Christendom, hold our conduct to be tainted Avith foulest wrong. 
The glory of our arms is sullied, they say, by treason and rebel- 
lion. The charge has been heralded forth to the world by the 
trunipet-tongued press for these twenty ycai's and more. The 
historian, applauded wherever the English language is read, for 
his elo(iuent and accurate rendering of Liberty's struggles in 
other lands, has given the weight of his nam.e to the accusation. 
The jurist, in learned disquisitions upon the structure of the 
Federal Government, has asserted it. The splendid eloquence of 
Webster has given it the widest currency in men's thoughts. 
While poets, in sweetest strains have canonized our conquerors, 
as the champions of law and of huma'jity. You cannot, if you 
choose, avoid this question of principle. Your children must 
meet it as a part of the history of our country. It is thrust upon 
their attention in the political discussions of the day. And if 
their assertions can be made good — if we were banded together 
in a vile conspiracy against law and order; if we fought to sus- 
tain a social system, the essence of which was unchristian and 
inhuman oppression to the helpless African — then is it true not 
only that we deserved our crushing defcit, but also the tenfold 
greater humiliations and oppressions which the so-called peace 
brought with it; and besides all this, we richly mei-it an immor- 
tality of shame. There is a fearful responsibility in the sight of 
God and before the bar of public opinion, which rests someivhere. 
Every drop of blood shed in that unhallowed strife cries, like 
Abel's, from the earth which drank it in. Every tear of broken- 
hearted womanhood, every pang inflicted upon orphaned children, 
asking in vain for ftithers whom they should never again behold, 
charges sin at somebody's door. If it be at mine, I wish to know 
it. I believe in that supreme judgment-seat before which v.-e 
must all stand to answer for the deeds done in the body. I would 
not wish to meet God before I had repented and been forgiven, 
if I have so sinned. You feel as I do in this matter. It is ne- 



cessary for us, then, to review the grounds of our past action that 
we may settle, each for himself, what is our present duty. We 
are agreed, ray comrades, in the opinion that neither courage nor 
success can establish the righteousness of a cause or atone for the 
wrong of it. Robbers and pirates have been as brave as Hector. 
Conquered Poland weeps over the grave of Kosciusko. Mere 
numbers cannot make that to be just which in the one man were 
a wrong. 

More than this. I hold that every element of truth and right 
which entered into our conduct, is to be cherished as a sacred 
heritage for our whole country, and for civil liberty all the world 
over. There is a power in truth and right, which is not alto- 
gether of earth. 

"Truth crushed to the earth shall rise again, 

The eternal years of God are hers ; 

And on the eternal throne 'tis writ — 
'■Magna est Veritas et jjrcevalebit.'' ^' 

Roman poets sang how captive Greece subdued, by the power 
of thought, her haughty conquerors. If we are true to the right 
for which you perilled life and limb, if we bear with dignity our 
painful reverses, if we cultivate genuine respect for the honest 
intentions of those who, through error of judgment, as we be- 
lieve, opposed us, we may find yet that peace no less than war 
has its victories. The invaluable right of local self-government, 
of "community independence," as Mr. Davis aptly expresses it, 
the sovereignty and independence of the States, as contrasted 
Avith and opposed to the centralisation of extra-constitutional 
powers at the Federal Capital — this was the great end at which 
we aimed in seeking to separate from the Union. And had it 
pleased God to give us success, the resulting blessings would 
have been freely shared with all our associates. 

This claim of ours to be in the right, to be suffering for a good 
cause, will, of course, subject us to expressions of contempt, and 
perhaps also to grave suspicion, on the part of the dominant fac- 
tion. This burden, also, we must bear manfully and in good 
temper. We can only disclaim all thought of enforcing our 
theory by an appeal to arms, and let our conduct continue to 



vindicate us with all candid observers, in the future, as it has 
done, under terrible provocations for the past sixteen years. Let 
coercion have been ever so contrary to the letter and spirit of the 
Constitution in 1860, still we have been coerced. And now, as a 
minority, in the power of an irresistible niiijority, we can only 
protest against misjudgment, by making our appeal to the better 
instincts and the more fully informed judgment of the American 
people. We gave up all thought of further trying our differ- 
ences by battle when we laid down our arras sixteen years ago. 
But, of course, we have had credit, with some people, neither for 
common honesty nor for common sense. The sturdy bear who 
has just been feeling, on flank and throat, the claws and teeth of 
the catamount, may be expected to keep a sharp eye upon the 
thicket whore his maimed adversary lies panting. But one can 
see that the epithets "rebel" and '"traitor," which were wont to 
be served up for us piping hot, morning, noon, and night, are 
fast growing to be the especial bone of certain toothless old 
hounds who try faithfully to make up in snarling and growling 
for the inability to bite. 

You, my comrades, have rested all this while in the in- 
terpretation of duty which our beloved Lee announced when he 
sheathed his sword at Appomattox. There is a pretty story 
abroad concerning an interview between the General and some 
of the fiery young officers, in which they proposed that, instead 
of surrendering the army, he should allow it to disband, so that 
as many as possible might escape from the coils of the anaconda 
and maintain an active resistance. One can imagine the old 
hero smiling sadly upon his courageous children, while he said in 
substance : "Gentlemen, it becomes us to look at this matter as 
Christians. It would be a sin to promote the useless waste of 
life. The course which you propose would carry violence to 
many a peaceful neighborhood where the war has not yet gone. 
It would fill the land with bands of hungry and desperate men, 
Avho must live by plunder. Some of you might go to 'bush- 
whacking.' But it does not suit a man of my years. I shall 
surrender to Gen. Grant." 

Can you not recall our great commander as he aj>peared that 





day when he reviewed our corps at Gordoiisville, just as 3'ou were 
returning from your campaign in East Tennessee to your old 
place in the "Army of Northern Virginia ?" It seems that a 
picture of iiim is photographed in ray memory, as he sat upon 
his old iron-grey steed, majestic as the Phidian Jupiter, in form 
and feature the model of manhood, his great, dark eyes flashing 
like disks of fire, as he surveyed your lines. You remember how 
you broke over the rules of military discipline. The thunders 
of cannon and the bugle's loud call had prepared you to expect 
him. But Avhen he was once more before your eyes, the com- 
mand, "Present arms!" was not very literally obeyed. The 
mighty tide of passionate love to your trusted leader was running 
too high to be expressed in set forms. You tossed your hats into 
the air, and the wild "Confederate yell," so often heard above the 
din of battle, burst from yourlieaving bosoms until the hills ranof 
again. Fifteen thousand men thus signified their willingness to 
put their lives in his hands, with the same trust with which, 
when they were babes, they had reclined in the loving arms 
of their mothers. I remember turning to my friend, Col. 
Venable of the General's staff, to say: "Don't you know 
tJiat makes the old hero feel good to the very bottom of 
his heart ?" "No, B.," he replied, "the General is not think- 
ing of that now. He knows what sort of a reception they 
are to meet, poor fellows, at the hands of other people." 
And when I turned to scan that noble countenance as he gravely 
uncovered, in response to your enthusiastic greeting, as well as 
I could see through eyes that were dimmed with mist, there was 
no flush of warrior's pride, on cheek or brow. The features were 
as calm as marble, and the firm lips seemed as though they had 
never smiled. 

This was, as I remember, the 4th of May, 1864. The next 
day, you will recall, Ewell's guns at Germania Ford, awoke the 
echoes of the Wilderness. And on the fUh you were in the 
thickest of that bloody struggle, wdiich shifted wath scarcely the 
intermission of an hour, around our right flank, until foiled in 
every onset, the enemy broke in tumultuous surges against the 
entrenchments of Richmond, and you had hurled iiim back once 



10 



again, panting and bleeding, from the crest of Gaines's Mill, 
Avhence you had driven him Avith the bayonet just two years 
before. 

Yes, comrades, our General set us an example of enduring in 
ilent dignity, in manly patience, those evils which the passions 
'lat are excited by war usually accord to the vanquished. It 
oems unaccountable to us that the brave men of the North should 
ave condescended to heap upon us such useless indignities and 
oppressions as the "Reconstruction" period developed. One 
would have imagined that they would not so readily have suffered 
political demagogues, who had never smelled burnt powder, to use 
them as tools of revenge and oppression against their country- 
men, Avhose courage, constancy, and evident honesty of purpose, 
Avhatever they might think of your judgment, had won from them 
a generous recognition while you stood, foot to foot, on the hotly 
contested field. You doubtless have heard with sorrow the effect 
which these uidiappy events seemed to exert upon the dutiful 
soul of Gen. Lee. That same sympathy which made him insen- 
sible to the throbs of a gratified ambition, when, at Gordonsville, 
the wild transports of your enthusiasm, showed how you were 
ready to die at his bidding, also laid upon him the great burden 
of his afflicted country. There seems to be abundant evidence 
that his great heart bled silently all the while. Scorning to utter 
his complaints to man, he doubtless pleaded for us before that 
Lord to whom he had looked, in Christian faith, for guidance 
in those days when he felt the responsibility^ of holding in his 
hands the lives of brave men and the destinies of his country 
There seems to be no doubt that these oppressive griefs hurried 
him to his death. A few — very few — even among his enemies, 
have taken it upon them to attempt to detract from the just fame 
of the greatest name in the military annals of Anierica. The 
press tells us that the one has made this blunder, whom least of 
all men it becomes so to speak. But of that individual, it may 
be said, as Talleyrand observed to the Parisian beauty who asked 
him how she should manage to get rid of her troublesome ad- 
mirers. It was her misfortune to have bad teeth. And the 
bitter rejdy to her inijuiry was : ^'■Madam, you have bat to open 



11 



your mouth.'' Lee's fame is beyond tliereacli of detraction. It 
is part of tlic heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race. And the groat 
■world applauds our bard, when, in his exalted enthusiasm, he 

says : 

"Never hand waved sword from stain so free ; 

Nor a truer brand led a braver band ; 

Nor a l)raver died for a fairer land : 

Nor fairer land had cause so i^rand, 

Nor cause had a leader like Lee." 
Comrades, I am thoroughly persuaded of your capacity so to 
naster the details of this controversy as not only to be able, not 
jnly to satisfy the demands of your own consciences, (which 
loubtless you have done,) but also to be ready to give to your 
•hildren, and others who claim it, a reason for your faith; and 
that in such a manner as to vindicate the living and the dead 
from the charge of rebellion and treason. 

I well remember the keen zest, and shrewdness too, with which 
around the camp-fire, you entered into discussions upon the issues 
of the war, the policies of the rival governments, and the conduct 
of public men. I remember how you relished the biting wit of 
the RicJimond Examiner, while you dissented from many of its 
conclusions. I do not forget that, when your General of Division 
(whom you greatly liked and admired) was suddenly placed at the 
head of the Western army, you gravely shook your heads, while 
you said, "The President has spoiled a good lieutenant to make 
a poor captain." You had taken the gauge of the man, and 
knew better than the ablest men at a distance just what our 
Mnjor-General could do, and what he could not do. Mr. Davis 
himself is far too sagacious an observer of men, not to do homage 
to the unprejudiced instincts of the private soldier. A friend, 
who had good opportunities to learn wdiat occurred in the higher 
governmental circles at Richmond, repeated to me this observation 
of our accomplished chief: "I receive," he said, "two conflict- 
ing opinions touching Gen. [Stonewall] Jackson. The one conies 
from many scientific soldiers, the other from the rank and file of 
his army. As for myself, I believe the rank and file to be nearer 
the truth." You come of a stock among whom the attribute of 
individuality is probably more highly developed than elsewhere 



12 



in tlie United States. The presence among you of a race held 
under subordination, tended to develop self-reliance and individ- 
uality in you. Hold fast to your inherited traits, and judge for 
yourselves in this great controversy. Do not allow the strono- 
current of hostile opinion to drown you out. You have the best 
of helps in forming your judgment. Mr. Stephens first, and 
now, of late, Mr. Jefferson Davis, have laid us all under lasting 
obligations by their m:isterly defence of the honor of Southern 
men. I trust that you will not fail to study the "War between 
the States," and especially the "Rise and Fall of the Confederate 
Government." Its pure classic English, its exhaustive learning, 
logical argument, and devoted patriotism, will go forth among 
thinking men as a fitting protest against hasty and harsh judg- 
ment of us. Let your children become familiar with that able 
discussion, and thev will be in no dansrer of iirowinw ashamed of 
the cause for which you contended, or of the manner in which ^-ou 
ac(|uitted yourselves. 

I propose offering some suggestions in tlie way of stimulating 
and guiding your inquiries into a subject that so nearly not only 
concerns your honor, but one that involves — so the fathers of the 
Republic have testified — the very foundations of American 
liberty, the oorner-stone of the whole system. 

The Secession movement, then, may be viewed from eitlier of 
these two standing-points : firsts it may be regarded as an at- 
tempted revolution ; or, secondly, it may be treated in special 
relation to the Federal system set forth in the Constitution, and 
the Union of States based thereupon. Let us take our view 
from each of these standing-points, in their order. 

1. And /?"rsr, regarded as an attempted revolution in the ex- 
isting Government, we may claim tlrat Secession was morally 
justifiable upon the same grounds as justified our fathers in sepa- 
rating from the British Empire. For this solemn step our 
fathers pleaded the wrongs inflicted upon them by the British 
Government, and the inalienable rights of freemen ; and, relying 
upon the justice of their cause, they were willing to appeal to 
arms. After years of suffering, victory crowned their efforts, 
and they were acknowledged as independent. The "right of 



13 



revolution" in tliis cnso is admitted by all Americans. It de- 
pends entirely upon certain moral and •political considerations, 
which our fathers set forth in the famous Declaration of hide- 
pendence. But, in later times, a some^vhat different statement 
has been made. For example, Mr. Lincoln, speaking in his 
place as a member of Congress in 1848, uses these words : "Any 
people anywhere, being inclined and having the poiver^ have the 
right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form 
a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a 
sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the 
Avorld. Nor is the right confined to cases in which the whole 
people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any 
portion of such people that can, may revolutionise, and make 
their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More 
than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolu- 
tionise, putting down a minority, intermingled with or near about 
them, who may oppose their movements. Such minority was 
precisely the Tories of our own Revolution. It is the quality of 
revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break off 
both, and make new ones." Cited by Mr. Stephens. 

You will be able to see more readily, by means of the words 
which I have emphasised, that pli//sical force is here introduced 
as if it were an essential element of this inalienable natural right. 
It is an element, of course, which can larely, if ever, be ascer- 
tained without bloodshed. According to this, it would follow as 
a necessary inference, that our fathers were somewhat hasty and 
premature in basing an undoubted claim upon such moral and po- 
litical considerations as are found in their great manifesto, inas- 
much as, on the 4th of July, 1776, it was clearly impossible for 
mortal man to say whether or not they had "the power" to en- 
force it. Judge Black of Pennsylvania seems to take similar 
ground touching Secession. It was, he thinks, a revolutionary 
proceeding. We ought to have admitted it, and to have expected 
the consequences — which of course means an appeal to arms, 
that it might be decided which of the two parties had "the power." 
It would be quite difficult, I imagine, to show, according to this 
theory, that George III. did any wi'ong in opposing our fathers 



14 



with firo ami sword, notwithstanding- the usual considerations set 
forth in their manifesto to the world, since only in this way could 
it be known whether or not the "rebels, ' as he termed them, 
had '•'■the pozver/' Mr. Greeley was far more consistent with 
raoral reasoning when he thus expressed himself in the New 
York Tribune, under date of November 9, 1860 : "The tele- 
graph informs us that most of the Cotton States are meditating a 
withdrawal from the Union, because of Lincoln's election. Very 
well ; they have aright to meditate. . . . And now, if the Cottoa 
States consider the value of the Union debatable, we maintain 
their perfect right to discuss it. Nay, we hold, with Jefferson 
[in the Declaration of Independence], to the inalienable riglit of 
COMMUNITIES to alter or abolish forms of government that have 
become oppressive or injurious, and if the Cotton States shall 
decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we 
insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be 
a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless ; aiid we do not 
see how one paiiy can have a right to do what another party has 
a right to prevent." [Italics mine.] 

Our fathers certainly acted on the theory of Mr. Greeley, not 
on that of Mr. Lincoln and Judge Black. Indeed, it seems im- 
possible for them to have acted at all, if they hnd attempted to 
carry out this theory of revolution. TIow far this erroneous 
view may have, in the end, united the "War Democrats" and 
Mr. Lincoln in the wicked and cruel policy of King George, it 
might be curious to investigate. But my purpose requires that 
we rather turn our consideration to the reasons whicli pronipted 
us to separate from the General Government at Washington. 
And as we do so, let it be remembered all the while, that the 
men of 1860 acted, according to Jefferson's theory, as '^coin- 
munities," not as mobs. These State governments were as 
orderly in their movements as were the revolutionary govern- 
ments in 1776. They were as able to conserve the great needs 
of government — the protection of the individual in the enjoy- 
ment of life, liberty, and property — as were those set up by their 
f\ithers in the preceding century. It was not as disorderly mobs 
of individuals that the sece<ling States moved, but as ord( rly 



15 

"coinmiinities."' What but ambition anil Inst of powor tempted 
King George to coerce the colonies? He did not propose, by 
his war of subjugation, to confer blessings upon them which they 
were madly throwing away. He did not propose to advance the 
cause of humanity. What more did our brethren propose by 
coercion in 1860 ? 

First, then, like our forefathers, we had the long-standing 
grievance of an unjust and burdensome system of taxation. 

W^e need not stop now to discus what was once such a prolific 
theme for popular declamation, the Fishing Bounties. The 
plainness of the issue and the sort of absurd injustice of subsi- 
dising, under pretext of creating a nav}^, what had become one 
of the great sources of wealth in the Northeast, used to excite 
your disgust. The Southern farmer could not be brought to see 
why he should work all day in the blazing sun, to be rewarded 
by the price which his produce could command in an open market, 
while another could not sit in his own boat and catch fish unless 
the Government consented to pay him for the virtuous work, 
over and above the ample proceeds of a gainful calling. 

But, leaving these funny little peculiarities out of the account, 
I goon to observe that the Constitution authorises Congress to 
levy taxes in order to pay the public debts and "provide for the 
common defence and general welfare of the United States." But 
common sense can see, unless the mind be utterly warped by 
local feeling or self-interest, that Congress had gone fiir beyond 
the just interpretation of that provison. They had, for a long 
series of years, persisted, through the votes of an interested ma- 
jority, in laying taxes on foreign imports, not only for revenue, 
nor even to foster feeble domestic enterprises until they could 
become self-sustaining — a very doubtful expedient, at the best — 
but had continued, by high tariffs, to throw the heavier burdens 
upon the agricultural districts, until thegreat bulk of wealth had 
been accumulated around these manufacturing centres. You saw 
a privileged class of capitalists thus created at your expense, for you 
were paying immense sums to them over and above the cost of such 
goods in England or France, and the cost of carriage hither. 
For example, until a very recent date, there was a heavy tax on 



16 



quinine of foreign manufacture. What was the result of this 
"protective tariff'?" Simply this, that in neutralising the mala- 
ria of your climate, the South, chiefly, has paid many millions 
of excessive profit to Powers & Weightman, the American manu- 
facturers, of Piiiladelphia. It is hard to believe that any sane 
man, however blinded he might be by local feeling or self-interest, 
could really believe that the protective tariff" was, for the most 
part, really laid "for the general welfare of the United States." 

Against its grossly injurious and burdensome features you had 
for years protested in Congress through your Representatives. 
Your illustrious Calhoun had affixed to the system the brand of 
legalised robbery and spoliation. But money and sectional in- 
terest had found means to continue, under forms of law, to trans- 
fer the proceeds of your toil to other men's pockets. Promises 
of amendment were often made, to be as often broken. And 
evidence exists that agitations about slavery and the territories 
were successfully resorted to, in order that under cover of your 
love of peace and of the Union, the screw might be turned upon 
you the more tightly. Thus, under the mask of irrational con- 
structions of the Federal compact. South Carolina and the agri- 
cultural States were as truly taxed without their own consent as 
ever the colonies had been. 

Secondly^ there was the great grievance of the exclusion by 
partisan and unconstitutional legislation of the South from a fair 
proportion of the common property in the territories. It has 
been claimed, of course, that slavery being the creature of local 
or municipal law, it was competent to Congress to exclude it from 
the public domain. But the Supreme Court, in the famous 
"Drcd Scott case," after solemn deliberation declared, seven 
judges to four, that Congress had no such power delegated to it 
by the Constitution. The public domain being the joint posses- 
sion of all the States, it was held by this venerable tribunal that 
any citizen of any State had the right to enter that domain with 
his property. It belonged in part to his own State. And it was 
declared to be the duty of Congress to protect such residents in 
the enjoyment of their properi,y, until such time as the territory 
might be duly organised into a State, whereupon the people 



17 



might say whether or not they would have slavery. This is the 
Constitution. But by partisan legislation, the free States had 
managed to obtain for their people in various ways the lion's 
share of the common property. The Missouri Compromise, 
without authority of constitutional grant, having fixed the line 
of 36° 80' as the northern boundary to which we might go with 
our property, and a great slice having been in this way clipped 
off from the Louisiana purchase (contrary to our solemn treaty 
with France touching that territory), and afterwards a slice 
taken from Texas in the same manner, this agreement, into 
which the South had reluctantly entered for the sake of peace, 
was rudely broken when the admission of California was under 
discussion. Our associates then refused to extend the line of 
36° 30' to the Pacific Ocean, because it did not suit them. And 
when Kansas was being prepared for an early admission, emi- 
grant societies among our associates brought the greater wealth 
and population of the North to deprive us of that territory. 
Thus while, at the formation of the Union, the preponderance of 
territory lay with the South, partisan legislation and extra-legal 
societies had absorbed about three-fourths of all public territory. 
And from this two evils resulted. First, a stigma was put upon 
the owners of slaves. And, secondly, the preponderance of the 
other section was so greatly increased as to leave us wholly at 
their mercy. This result Avas generally acknowledged, I believe; 
and by many of our friends we were urged to trust to the gene- 
rosity of that section who had showed so little consideration 
hitherto. 

Thirdly, we had the great grievance of persistent attacks by 
our associates upon that species of property, for the protection 
of which special guarantees had been given in the Constitution — 
guarantees without which, it is well known, the Union would 
never have existed at all. These attacks were of two sorts. 
Citizens of the States associated with us, availing themselves of 
a freedom of access to our borders growing out of the Union, had 
repeatedly sought to incite servile insurrections, regardless of 
those attendant horrors, arson, murder, and lust, which history 
2 



18 

warned them to expect. And when the infamous John Brown, 
of Kansas notorioty, his arms red to the shoulder Avith Southern 
blood shed there, attempted to invade Virginia, his just punish- 
ment, after fair trial under the law, was received witli demonstra- 
tions of public grief in the North. Minute guns were fired, bells 
tolled, churches di'aped in mourning, and the South denounced 
by the ministers of religion, because forsooth Virginia declined 
to allow the assassination of her people. 

But even this was as nothing. The I'aid of Brown being duly 
investigated, evidence was found showing — so said the Investiga- 
ting Committee of the Senate — that eminent citizens of sister 
States had furnished to Brown's band the armament with which 
they had invaded Virginia. This, however, was not the worst. 
The Senate in that Report solemnly called upon these States, in 
strict accord with their oaths in making the constitutional com- 
pact, to provide against such infractions of the public peace, 
urging this plea with the consideration that if these States failed 
to do it, t]ie7'e ivas no adequate means in the power of the Gene- 
ral Gover)unentfor I'emedying the evil. 

But what effect might be expected from such States when they 
themselves, in strange forgetfulness of their engagements, had al- 
ready passed the "Personal Liberty Bills," which were notori- 
ously and avowedly intended to render null and void the consti- 
tutional stipulations which guaranteed the rendition of fugitive 
slaves ! Thirteen of the States, if I remember aright, had set 
themselves to obstruct the operation of the covenant which they 
had made with one another and with their Southern sisters. 
While at the same time, with an obliquity of purpose and of per- 
ception, rare in modern history, each of tliem continued the form 
of requiring her Governor, Legislators,' Judges, and other officials, 
to bind themselves by oath to observe the Constitution, which she 
would yet punish him for doing, in this one particular ! 

It was this fearful instance of covenant-breaking which, as all 
know, brought Mr. Webster into disfavor in his own State, as 
elsewhere in the North. For with heroic fortitude he planted 
himself boldly in the breach and thundered his denunciations of 
the wrong. And when he came as an honored guest to Capon 



19 

Springs, V;i,, in 1851, lie said, in allusion to these "Personal 
Liberty Bills," as he had said in Buffalo and elsewhere: 

"How absurd it is to suppose that when diflerent parties enter into a 
compact for certain purposes, either can disregard any one provision, and 
expect, nevertheless, the other to observe the rest ! I intend, for one, to 
regard, and maintain, and carry out, to the fullest extent, the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, which I have sworn to support in all its parts 
and all its provisions. It is written- in the Constitution : 

'"No PERSON' HELD TO SERVICE OK LABOR IN OXE StATE, UNDER THE LAWS 
THEREOF, ESCAPING INTO ANOTHER, SHALL IN CONSEQUENCE OF ANY LAW OR 
REGULATION THEREIN, BE DISCHARGED FROM SUCH SERVICE OR LABOR, BUT 
SHALL BE DELIVERED UP ON CLAIM OF THE PARTY TO WHOM SUCH SERVICE 
OR LABOR IS DUE, ' 

"That is as much a part of the Constitution as any other, and as 
equally binding and obligatory as any other upon all men public or 
private. And who denies this ? None but the Abolitionists of the North. 
[This was spoken before thirteen States had passed the "Personal Liberty 

Bills."] I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat, that if the 

Northern States refuse, wilfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that 
part of the Constitution which respects fugitive slaves, and Congress pro- 
vide no remedy, the South is no longer bound to observe the compact. 
A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side.'*' 

Now, it is true that many of the good people of the North 
were, at the time of the passage of the "Personal Liberty Bills," 
in perplexing circumstances. At the formation of the General 
Government, slavery existed in all of the thirteen States which 
had been colonies of Great Britain, with the doubtful exception 
of Massachusetts, where it is possible that it had ceased within 
a short period previous. And when domestic slavery ceased in 
the North, it had been because of climate and soil, not from sen- 
timent. But a great change had taken place in men's minds 
then, and many had come to look upon bond service as an unlaw- 
ful relation. 

True enough, as it happens, this opinion is totally inconsistent, 
as anybody with half an eye can see, with the moral standard of 
the Old Testament, or of the New. Bond service is unquestion- 
ably recognised as a lawful institution not only in the political 
regulations of the Jewish State, but in the Decalogue itself — the 
"manservant" (Heb. ehed) and "maidservant" (Heb. amah) of the 
Fourth and Tenth Commandments being clearly slaves. 



20 



The Apostles not only admited slaveholders into the Christian 
Church, as all who read the New Testament know, but they freely 
treat of the reciprocal duties of masters and slaves (Gr. douloi), 
without so much as a suspicion in their minds that the relation 
w^as an evil in itself. 

Paul, indeed, went so far as to send Onesiraus, a runaway slave 
whom he found in Rome, back to his master, Philemon, who, it 
seems, was Paul's friend, living in Western Asia. The Apostle, 
while interceding with the master for the offender, freely admits 
the wrong, and binds himself, as his surety, to see that Philemon 
shall be compensated, if he shall see fit to claim it, for the time 
lost by the bondman while absent from his work, mentioning cer- 
tain moneys of Paul then in Philemon's hands. 

All this, of course, is familiarly known. But then our country- 
men were not amenable to man for any misconstruction of God's 
law or of his revelation. And I see not how they could be ex- 
cused from following the dictates of conscience, even when it is 
a misinformed conscience. All, indeed, are bound to seek light, 
and to correct mistakes. But so long as conscience condemns a 
thing, the man is bound to forbear. Mr. Webster, therefore, 
as it seems to me, was not altogether justified in putting the law 
of the land above the private conscience, as I understand him to 
do in some of his supremely brave utterances against the excesses 
of abolitionism. The law of the land cannot warrant a man in 
doing what he, at the time, holds to be a sin. In that case he can 
only submit to the penalty; he cannot obey the mandate. 

But the abolitionist's great wrong was that he absolved him- 
self from the covenant, in so far as he saw fit, and yet held us 
bound, on peril of our lives, by whatever part of it he had left. 
"The restoration of fugitive slaves is a wrong," he said, "and 
therefore I will not do it. But you shall keep the part that I 
approve, or I'll kill you, if I can." John Quincy Adams was 
correct, in 1839, when he proposed to abrogate the whole com- 
pact in order that two new governments might be formed — the 
Northern one free from the sin of slaveholding, as he was pleased 
to think it. And if a man's conscience could not wait for such 
a result, the remedy was at hand. He could do as our fathers 



21 

did when they left behind thera laws that they could not consci- 
entiously obey, and came to the New World. They could go to 
Canada. But to abrogate at option a part of the compact which 
has become distasteful to me, and then require my confederate 
to keep the rest, is as false in principle, as it is tyrannical in 
practice. 

Lastly, all these evils, crying aloud for relief, assumed a hope- 
less and remediless aspect on the election to the Presidency of 
Abraham Lincoln, a sectional candidate, on a sectional issue, and 
by a strictly sectional vote. In 1858, upon a public and solemn 
occasion, he had said, that the Union could not be perpetuated 
"half free and half slave," that is, slaveholding. No relief surely 
could be expected where he could control. And the dark outlook was 
rendered more hopeless when men discerned as his destined chief 
minister and adviser that Wra. H. Seward who had proclaimed 
an "irrepressible conflict" between abolitionists and Southerners; 
while to us he had declared : "We have beaten you in the terri- 
tories, and we will follow you into the States." 

Now, when we calmly review all these wrongs and provocations, 
adding to them the fierce denunciations that for years had poured 
upon us from the partisan press and from the orators of abolition- 
ism, does it not seem to you that, upon the ground of the inalien- 
able "right of revolution," we had the same justification as the 
Boston patriots had when they threw the tea into the sea ? I 
see not how one party of revolutionists can be justified, and the 
other condemned. Comrades, if your ancestors and mine, who 
mingled their blood at King's Mountain, deserved the tribute 
which was accorded to them in the Centennial of last May, 
if George Washington and his associates merited the praise 
which America is ready to bestow at Yorktown in October, then 
you cannot be justly stigmatised for following their example. 
They are not patriots because they happened to succeed. You 
are not rebels because you were overpowered, after your heroic 
exploits had illustrated the name of the Confederate army. 

2. But we have vantage-ground in seeking to justify our course 
as Secessionists, of which it is next proposed to avail ourselves. 
We have a right to claim that in rescindinc/ their own acta, by 



22 



which the Constitution was adopted and the Union formed, the 
States exercised that inherent sovereignty which belonged to them, 
according to the treaty with Great Britain, ivherein the thirteen 
colonies were acknowledged as free and independent States. This 
inherent sovereignty they did not surrender when they delegated 
certain powers to the (reneral Grovernment as their common 
agent. And, being the sovereign authorities, united by a Federal 
Compact, it necessarily devolved upon each of them to judge for 
itself, in the last resort, of all alleged violations of such a Com- 
pact, and to determine the best remedies for the same. The power 
that delegates is competent to recall. And the act of your State, 
in revoking her grants of power to the General Government, was 
as orderly and valid as the one by ivhich she ratified the Compact 
and entered the Union. 

As bearing directly upon this proposition you will find the fol- 
lowing historical facts : 

1st. Before the war of the Revolution there were, speaking in 
general terms, between the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, 
thirteen colonies acknowledging obedience to the British Crown, 
but having no special bond of civil union among themselves. 
Special agreements had been entered into by some of the New 
England colonies for mutual defence against the Indians, but 
they had been voluntary, local, and limited to this purpose. Each 
colony had its own government, organised under its own royal 
charter. Each had its own customs, religious establishments, 
and internal administration. Thus they were diverse in origin, 
in customs, and in their interests. The claim of Judge Story 
and others to have formed a bond of political union between these 
colonies, existing prior to the War of the Revolution, has not 
commended itself to persons acquainted with the facts of their 
history. 

'2nd. The colonies, conceiving themselves to be wronged by the 
British Government, sent delegates to a convention or Congress 
at Philadelphia in 1774 for conference and mutual advice. 
In this conference each colony acted as a separate political 
body. This the manner of voting showed most conclusive- 
ly. For. regardless of the number of representatives sent. 



2$ 



and of the population represented, eacli of the colonics cast 
one vote. A formal declaration of the Rights of the colonies 
having been made, this body recoraniended that another, of like 
nature, be called to meet May 10th, 1775, and then dissolved. 

Srd. The colonies acting upon this suggestion, the second Con- 
gress of their delegates met at the time suggested. And finding 
that all measures of redress for the people, as British subjects, 
failed, they declared that the only remedy was for all the colonies 
to throw off their allegiance to the British King, and declare 
themselves independent. A manifesto to this effect, stating their 
grievances, and declaring themselves to be free, was prepared, 
and on the fourth of July, 1776, it was signed and published to 
the world. It is known as the American Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. But to base the political unity of the colonies on this 
manifesto is to overlook several fundamental facts, such as these: 
First, that for some time after the declaration had been prepared, 
it could not be signed and published by the delegates, until each 
delegation had received specific instructions to do so from its 
own Sta'e government; and upon being separately instructed to 
that effect, each delegation did sign, by authority and in the be- 
half of its own State, as they now termed themselves. Some of 
the governments delayed to take action, day after day, and yet 
this great step had to wait upon their pleasure. Second, in f^xct, 
several of the colonies had already set iip revohitio)uir>j govern- 
ments, before the Declaration of Independence was authorised by 
them ; some taking care, however, to say that the revolutionary 
governments were only to last until accommodation could be had 
with the King. TliirdJij, this "Declaration" was not of the 
nature of an organic laiv at all, but only had the force of a man- 
ifesto, addressed to the civilised woidd. Fourtlthf, the delegates 
of the colonies, or States, showed their appreciation of this, by 
proceeding at once to draw up "Articles of Confederation," hav- 
ing the force of organic law, which would really unite the States 
into a Confederacy. These points are all patent upon the face 
of our history, and have been, as Mr. Stephens shows, embodieil 
in the decisions of our Supreme Court — "War between the States," 
Vol. I., pp. 76-81. The verbal analysis, offered by Mr. Everett 



24 

in his New York speech, showing, as he imagined, from the Dec- 
laration of Independence, that the "good people of these colonies" 
are "one people," is seen to be a mere quibble, not only violating 
the laws of language (Mr. Davis), but also so conflicting with the 
testimony of history as to be debated by any one acquainted with 
the facts. 

-ith. Pending the signing of this manifesto, a committee had 
been appointed (June 11th) to draw up such articles of confeder- 
ation as would unite the Colonies, or States, in a league for their 
common defence. This was to be Icm, indeed, the fundamental 
law of the Confederation, and not a mere "declaration," or 
appeal to the civilised world. On the 12th of July, eight days 
after the signatures had been afiixed to the manifesto, this sketch 
of the first constitution was reported to the Congress. It bore 
as its title this significant legend : ''Articles of Confederation 
and perpetual Union between the States of Neiv Hampshire, 
Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 
Connecticut, New York, Neiv Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaivare, 
Blaryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and 
Georgia.'' And, after giving the name and style of the league 
to be the "United States of America," the instrument went on 
to say in the second article : "-Each State retains its sovereignty, 
freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and 
right, which is not by this Confederacy expressly delegated, to the 
United States, in Congress assembled." These articles were ap- 
proved by the Congress, Nov. loth, 1777, and by some of the 
States in the following year. But the process of ratification was 
only completed March 1st, 1781, Maryland having for years re- 
fused to adopt or be bound by them. One more decisive fact 
completes this hasty examination. The delegates of a State in 
the Congress varied at option, but each State had one vote, as 
well Delaware with her population of 60,000 and Rhode Island 
with 70,000, as Pennsylvania with 400,000 and Virginia with 
750,000. Surely these fiicts show how much more correct was 
Mr. Webster's judgment as to the nature of the government set 
up by these "Articles of Confederation," than was that of Judge 
Srory or Mr. Kvei'ett. when, rej)lying in the Senate to Mr. 



•I'o 



Hayne. in 1830, he adiiiitted that the Confederation was just 
what the name implies, a league or compact^ between separate, 
independent political bodies, uniting only in certain respects, and 
for specified ends. But the great Senator himself fell into a 
most egregious error in 1H33, when, in his famous speech on 
"The Calhoun Resolutions," he based his argument for the fun- 
damental difference between that form of government proposed 
by the Convention of 1787 and the oldest one, on the word '■'•Con- 
stitution;'' for, as Calhoun was able to show, the records of that 
day, the resolution of the Congress advising the holding of a 
Convention in 1787, and the enactments of the States agreeing 
to do it, are thickly sown with the word "Constitution," "Fed- 
eral Constitution," "Constitution of the Confederation." And 
his accusation that the terms, "compact," and "accede," as em- 
ployed by the great Carolinian, were new inventions, introduced 
"for a purpose," fell to the ground when history was called to 
testify as to the terms used by Washington and his contempo- 
raries. 

In full keeping with these fjicts, it remains to be mentioned, 
that, when at length the war ended with a treaty of peace, the 
British Government acknowledged each of the Colonies by name 
as ^^independent States." And in the fifth article of the treaty. 
Congress agreed to recommend earnestly to the Legislatures of 
the respective State? to exercise the privileges of sovereignty, by 
ordering the restitution of estates "to real British subjects," etc. 

o^/i. But. as might have been anticipated, experience began 
by and by to discover some very serious defects in the details of 
the Articles of Confederation. The chief of these had respect 
to the mode of raising revenue for the General Government. No 
power to levy taxes having been conferred on it by the articles, 
the General Government was left to apportion out the estimated 
expenses, and then make a requisition upon each State for its 
share. The carelessness, or the jealousy, of State officers, was 
in this way working serious detriment to the Confederation, by 
lenving it helplessly in debt, while chafing and hard feelings 
began to appear. This was the course of matters in similar 
Confederacies, as in that of the I'nited Netherlands. The ob- 



2ti 



vious cure was to c.")!! soli date tlie thirteen States into one. And 
there were good and wreat men, like Hamilton of New York, 
Morris of Pennsylvania, Randolph of Virginia, and Pinckney of 
South Carolina, who were for it. And Madison leaned in that 
direction, but without going so far. But the plan adopted, as we 
shall see, was to adhere to the old plan of confederation between 
independent States, while giving to tlie General Government, as 
their common agent, certain enlarged powers, among which the 
most important was that of dealing directly Avith citizens instead 
of making requisition on the States. 

At various times during the war, Congress, moved by its diffi- 
culties, had petitioned the States for power to regulate trade, but 
without success, inasmuch as no plan could be devised upon which 
all were willing to unite, as required by Article XITI. of their 
compact. It was this source of trouble chiefly that finally led to 
the General Convention of 1787, wherein the present plan was 
drafted, and by whom it was recommended to the several States 
for their ratification. 

We have now reached the most important epoch in the consti- 
tutional history of our country ; for here, if anywhere, the States 
agreed to merge their sovereignties into one great State. A sort 
of skirmishing has been undertaken by Judge Story and Mr. 
Everett, to establish a basis for the consolidation theory farther 
back than this. Put Mr. Webster having expressly repudiated 
such a line of defence, in his reply to Hayne, this Convention 
has become the battle-ground where the question is to be decided 
as to the nature of our Government. 

First, then, as to the origin, of this General Convention. In 
1785, Mr. Monroe having again raised in the Congress the ques- 
tion of asking the States to delegate to the General Government 
power to regulate trade, it was deemed more prudent that the 
movement should begin with the States. And accordingly, the 
General Assembly of Virginia, under the lead of Madison, issued 
a call for a Convention of the States at Annapolis, Md., Sept. 
16th, 178t). But only four other States having accepted the in- 
vitation, the body, after recommending the call of another, to 
meet in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May, was dis- 



27 



solved. In the resolution, the following objects were proposed 
for the Convention of the States at Piiiladelphia : "To take into 
consideration the situation of the United States; to devise such 
further provisions as shall appe^ir to theia necessary to render 
the Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the ex- 
igencies of the Union ; and to report such an Act for that pur- 
pose to the United States in Congress assembled, as when agreed 
to by them, and aftervv'ards confirmed by the Legislatures of every 
State, will effectually provide for the same." 

The scope of this action having been made so wide, they gave 
as a reason for it, that upon reflection, the power to regulate 
trade (which was needed to give the General Government assured 
stability) was found to be so connected with the system as to re- 
quire other changes to be made. 

Their recommendation being duly reported to their own States, 
and a copy sent to the Executives of the other States and to 
Congress, that body passed a resolution endorsing the movement, 
"for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Con- 
federation, and reporting to Congress and the several Legisla- 
tures such alterations and provisions therein," etc. 

Thus we see that the object proposed was the amendment of 
an existing Constitution, and that the power of the General 
Convention was advisor//. Ir was to "report" to Congress and 
the Legislatures, according to the provisions of Article XTII., 
and only after ever^ State had approved, would any changes be- 
come effective. 

Meanwhile, before <'ongress had acted (on January 21, 1787), 
several of the States had appointed delegates. Others followed, 
and on the second Monday in May, twelve States being present 
by their delegates, the Convention was organised by the election 
of Gen. Washington as its President. Rhode Island declined to 
take any part. Before the Convention had assembled, however, 
Jefferson seems to have sketched, in a letter to Madison, written 
from Paris, the outlines of the division of the General Govern- 
ment into three departments — Legislative, Executive, and Ju- 
dicial. And by degrees, too, the thoughtful statesmen of that 
day began to catch glimpses of the plan of remedying the fric- 



•>,«; 



tion between the General and State Governments, by giving to 
the former power to act immediately on the citizen. In this Avay 
revenue could be assured and collision escaped. The idea can 
be traced to the speculations of Montesquieu, who had proposed 
it as an expedient for a Federal Republic, or composite govern- 
ment, made up of several units that were independent states in 
all except certain delegated powers. 

The enactments of the various Legislatures show that the 
delegates derived all authority from their respective States. And 
this was made clear also by the manner of voting, each State, 
the smaller as well as the larger, being allowed a single vote, no 
matter how many delegates it might have. 

It soon became evident that there was groat diversity of opinion 
as to the best plan for removing the existing evils. Luther Mar- 
tin, an able delegate from Maryland, has left his account of the 
parties. One, he says, was for merging the several States into 
one great State. Another was bent upon obtaining increased 
weight in the General Government for the larger States. The 
third, about equal in numbers to the other two combined, was 
for the Federal system already in force., but with enlarged powers. 
This highly intelligent testimony from an active member of the 
Philadelpliia Convention, is totally opposed to the interpretation 
of Webster. And the controlling majority of the Federalists is 
made more apparent when we remember that the second party of 
which he speaks were only seeking some such re(;ognition of the 
population of a State aa was provided for by representation in 
the lower House. 

Very early in the sessions opportunity was given for a test 
vote. Randolph of Virginia introduced a series of resolutions, 
the first of which insisted upon the necessity of a "National 
Government." And in the series this expression was repeated 
twenty-six times. But upon motion of Mr. Ellsworth of Con- 
necticut, these words were stricken out in every instance, and 
the old title, "Government of the United States," substituted in 
its place. In advocating the change, Ellsworth said that he 
wished it to go forth that the Convention pi'oposed the amend- 
ing of an existing government, not the creation of a new one. 



29 



One of the most important steps taken by the Convention was 
the determination to go beyond their instructions in one impor- 
tant particular. It is certain that at first it was proposed to go by 
the plan of passing amendments prescribed in Article XIII. of 
the old Constitution ; that is, after being approved by the Con- 
gress, they were to be submitted to each State Legislature, and 
only when approved by every one of these, could a change be 
made. This unanimity was now clearly out of the question, for 
one of the States had refused to be present in Convention. It 
was therefore recommended, as now found in Article VII. of the 
amended Constitution, that '"'■the ratification of the Convetitions 
of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of the Con- 
stitution between the States so ratifying the same.'' 

It was in this Article that Calhoun found his unanswerable 
argument showing that the Constitution is a compact "between 
the States" ratifying it. It shows, besides, these important facts : 

(1) that the act of each State alone could bind its people ; and 

(2) that provision was herein made with all deliberation for the 
secession of nine of the States (each acting as above shown, for 
itself only) from the existing Union, in order that they might 
form another, and, as was believed, abetter, under the new Con- 
stitution. And in order the more readily to give effect to this 
departure from the plan first contemplated, it was proposed that 
the ratifications of the States should be made by the people in 
Convention, rather than by the Legislatures, who, acting by dele- 
gated authority, were one degree lower than the people. 

This innovation upon the appointed method set forth in Article 
XIIL, awakened, as might have been anticipated, suspicion and 
criticism. It was charged with being a proposal to commit a 
breach of good faith. "How can you expect us to accept the 
pledges exacted by the new Constitution," they said, "when, in 
making it, you will disregard former pledges which are equally 
sacred?" To this objection Madison replied in the Federalist, 
to this effect: "It is an established doctrine on the subject of 
treaties, that all the Articles are mutually conditions of each, 
other ; that a breach of any one Article is a breach of the whole 
treaty ; and that a breach committed by either of the parties 



so 



absolves the others, and authorises them, if they please, to pro- 
nounce the compact violated and void. Should it unhappily be 
necessary to appeal to such delicate truths for a justification for 
dispensing with the consent of particular States to a dissolution 
of the Federal pact, will not the couj plaining parties find it a 
difficult task to answer the multiplied and important infractions 
with which they may be confronted? The time was, when it 
was incumbent on us to veil the ideas which this paragraph ex- 
hibits. The scene is now changed, and with it the part which 
the same motives dictated." 

To this statement of the case, the keen objectors of that day 
found no satisfactory answer. And the argument once admitted, 
as an explanation of the first union of the States, shows the 
"wisdom of Mr. Webster in parting company with Judge Story, 
as he did in his reply to Hayne in 1830, Avhen he so explicitly 
admitteil that union to have been a league. We shall see how 
his mighty intellect erred, when, contrary to the recorded testi- 
mony of its framers, he tried to make the new government appear 
to be of an entirely different species, instead of being of the 
same species with new grants of power. 

But this departure from the plan of amending the existing 
Constitution laid down in Art. XIII., necessitated a change in 
the mere phraseology of the preamble to the amended Constitu- 
tion which, though deemed by the Convention to be of a trivial 
import, has, principally through the misinterpretations of Mr. 
Webster, proved to be a fruitful source of evil in later times. 
The preamble as first written was in these words : 

" We the ■people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaicare, Manjland, Virginia, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, and Georgia, do ordain, declare, and establish the fol- 
lowing Constitution for the government of ourselves and our posterity.'' 

This preamble had been unanimoushj adopted by the Conven- 
tion. No change of opinion regarding the '"people" who were 
to "ordain" the Constitution is even hinted at as taking place. 
But inasmuch as provision had afterwards been made for any nine 



31 



iStates to leave the old, and form tlie new, government, it being 
plainly impossible to say certainly which of the thirteen would 
avail themselves of the provision, there was a manifest impro- 
priety in retaining" all the names of the States. Therefore, in 
the revision, the preamble was so altered as to be conformed to 
Art. VII., by writing, We the people of the United States." 

The change, indeed, as Mr. Stephens obse^'ves. ("Constitu- 
tional View of the War," etc.. Vol. I., p. 138,) was made by a 
^"^ sub committee on style,'' whose business it was to see that all 
parts of the document corresponded as to phraseology. They 
reported, of course, to the Convention, and, in adopting their 
report, it ordered the verbal change to be made. But that it in- 
volved a change of principle — such a fundamental change of their 
opinions as to the parties about to make the compact — history 
sternly denies. "We the people of the United States," as in- 
terpreted by the history can only signify, " We the people of 
each State so united.'' The most valued argument of Webster 
and his school is based upon a misconception of the facts fur- 
nished by this history. 

But the discussions in print, and before the several State Con- 
ventions, shed further light upon these controverted words, "We 
the people of the United States." In the Virginia Convention 
the keen intellect of Patrick Henry had scented danger in the 
phrase, and he demanded the reason for saying, "We the people 
of the United States," instead of "We the States." Madison, 
"the father of the Constitution," thus answered him : 

" Who are the parties to it [the Constitution] ? The people — but not 
the people as composing one great body ; but the people as composing 
thirteen sovereignties : were it, as the gentleman [Mr. Henry] asserts, a 
consolidated government, the assent of a majority of the people would 
be sufficient for its establishment, and as a majority have adopted it al- 
ready, the remaining States would be bound by the act of the majority, 
even if they unanimously reprobated it ; were it such a government as 
is suggested, it would be now binding on the people of this State without 
having had the privilege of deliberating upon it; but, sir, as it is, no 
State is bound by it, unthout its own consents 

Mr. Henry still continued to urge objections; but as he did not 
again recur to this one, it is fair to judge that his difficulty was 



?.9 



relieved by the unanswerable logic of" Madison, which sweeps 
from the field Mr. Webster and his party, as Avell as Mr. Henry's 
difficulty. 

In the "Federalist," No. XXX FX, he mee-ts objections in ex- 
actly the same way: "That it will be a Federal, and not a Nat- 
ional act, as these terms are understood by objectors, the act of 
the people as forming so many independent States, not as form- 
ing one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single considera- 
tion, that it is to result neither from the majority of the people 
of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It roust 
result from the unanirnous assent of the several States that are 
parties to it, differing in no otherwise from their ordinary assent 
than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but 
by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in 
this transaction," [/. e. the "ordaining and establishing" of the 
revised Constitution,] "as forming one nation, the will of the ma- 
jority of the whole people of the United States would bind the 
minority in the same manner as the majority in each State must 
bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be deter- 
mined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by con- 
sidering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the 
will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of 
these has been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitu- 
tion, is considered as a sovereign body, indeperident of all others, 
ayid only to he hound by its own voluntary act." 

Thus Madison, "the father of the Constitution," though per- 
sonally favoring a strong central government, is totally opposed 
to Webster's view of "the people in the aggregate" being the 
parties who "ordain and establish their constitution." He not 
only denies that construction, but completely refutes it by citing 
the facts in the case. Mr Davis is fully sustained in saying that 
it was Webster's fate to revive the current objections which had 
been urged at first against the Constitution by its enemies, and 
to impose them upon himself and others as the true exposition of 
the document. For this great error he has obtained from ill-in- 
formed partisans,, dazzled by the splendors of his genius, the title 
of "the great Expounder of the Constitution." 



The Convention having completed its revision, "reported," as 
it had been instructed to do, to the Congress, and in due time 
their recommendations were laid before the States in their sepa- 
rate conventions. It was here, as Madison observed, that the 
real work was to be done which was to give legal authority to the 
new compact: "It is time now," he wrote in the ''Federalist," No. 
XL., "to recollect that the powers [of the General Convention] 
were merely advisory and recommendatory; that they were so 
meant by the States, and so understood by the Convention; and 
that the latter have accordingly planned and proposed a Consti- 
tution which is to be of no more consequence than the paper on 
which it is written, unless it be stamped with the approbation of 
those to whom it is addressed." 

The ratifying acts of the several State Conventions, as they 
are spread in extenso upon the pages of Mr. Stephens, are of 
prime importance to the correct understanding of this question. 
An examination of them will show that in every instance, these 
Conventions understood that the Constitutional draft was now 
"proposed" to them, and that the act of each, in ratifying or re- 
jecting, would bind the people of its own State exclusively. "We 

the deputies of the people of the Delaware State 

for and in behalf our constituents, fully, freely, and entirely, ap- 
prove of, assent to, ratify, and confirm the said Constitution." 
"In the name of the people of Pennsylvania . . . the dele- 
gates of the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania . . . 
do, in the name, and hy the anfhority of the same people, and for 
ourselves, assent to and ratify the foregoing Constitution for the 
United States of America." 

The debates in the various State Conventions are invaluable 
helps in determining the interpretation put upon their own handi- 
work by the great men who acted as the agents of the States. 
And especially in the Conventions of Massachusetts, Virginia, 
and New York, were the debates instructive, not only because of 
the ability of members, but because their sentiments were nearly 
equally divided on the question of adopting. Massachusetts cast 
187 votes for it, and 168 against it. Having, perhaps, sufficiently 
anticipated what was said in the Virginia Convention, it may be 
3 



84 



well to sample the resolutions and debates in that of New York. 
The Convention of the Empire State, in the very act of ratification, 
like several of the other States, embodied in formal declara- 
tions, its sense of the compact, and of the limitations under which 
it was willing to adopt it. Among these declarations, explanatory 
of the sense in which New York ratified the Constitution, are 
these: "That all power is originally vested in. and consequently 
derived from the people, and that Government is instituted by 
them for their common interest, protection, and security." 

"That the powers of government may be re-assumed by the 
people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness ; 
that every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by the said 
Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United 
States, or the departments of the Government thereof, remaiyis 
to the people of the several States, or to the respective State 
Governments to Avhom they may have granted the same; and 
that those clauses in the Constitution which declare that Congress 
shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply that Con- 
gress is entitled to any powers not given by the said (Constitution : 
but such clauses are to be construed either as exceptions to cer- 
tain specified powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution." 

Other declarations follow, relating to religion, the militia, 
standing armies in peace and war, trial hy jury, the right of 
search, public assemblies, freedom of the press, elections, ex post 
facto lau's, writs of error, process against a State, Jurisdiction of 
the Supreme Court, ^-c. The enactment then goes on to say : 

"Under these impressions, and declaring that the rights aforesaid 
cannot be abridged or viohited, and that the explanations aforesaid are 
consistent with the aforesaid Constitution, and in confidence that the 
amendments which shall have been proposed to the said Constitution 
will receive mature consideration, We, the said delegates, in the name 
and in the behalf of the people of the State of New York, do, by these 
presents, assent to, and ratify the said Constitution." 

In the discussions Chancellor Livingston said : 

''The gentleman from Dutchess appears to have misapprehended son\e 
of the ideas which dropped from me. My argument was that a Republic 
might very properly be formed bi/ a league of States, l)ut that the laws 
of the general Legislature must act, and be enforced, upon in<lividuals. 



I am contendinij; for thin species of guoernment. The gentlemen who have 
spoken in opposition to me have either misunderstood or perverted ray 
meaninii; ; but, sir, I flatter myself, it has not been misunderstood by the 
Convention at large.'' 

"If we examine the history of the Federal Republics, whose legislative 
powers were exercised only in" (on ?) "States, in their collective capacity, 
we shall find in their fundamental principles the seeds of domestic vio- 
lence and consequent annihilation. This was the principal reason why 
I thought the old Confederation would be forever impracticable." — Ell. 
Deb. Vol. II., p. 215, 274; cited by Stephens. 

Again. "But, says the gentleman, our present Congress have not the 

same powers. I answer they have the very same Here the 

gentleman comes forward, and says that the States are to carry these 
powers into execution ; and that they have the power of non-compliance. 
But is not every State bound to comply? It is true that they have 
broken, in numerous instances, the compact by which they were obli- 
gated ; and they may do it again ; but will the gentleman draw an argu- 
ment from the facility of violating their faith ? Suppose there should be 
a majority of creditor States, under the present government ; might they 
not combine, and compel us to observe the covenants by which we had 
bound ourselves?" 

Mr. Williams having objected to the indefinite terms, ^'■com- 
mon defence' and"^e/i<ra^ welfare,'" holding that they might 
be so construed as to cover the abolition of State governments, 
Hamilton replied that the State liegislatures were effective barriers 
against such dangers. From such a body as the Legislature, he 
said, the spirit ot'opposition would be communicated to the people, 
and thus the very structure of "the Confederacy" provides against 
such evils. "TAe States,'' he said "caw iiever lose their powers 
till the ivhole people of America are robbed of their liberties. 
These must go together ; they must suppoi't each other, or meet 
one common fate." 

Such lanm-unsie in the enactments themselves, and in the ex- 
planatory debates, can leave no doubt as to "the people" who 
entered into the compact being the people of the States respec- 
tively. 

The principal conditions to their acceptance of the Constitu- 
tion were aftewards, upon the concurrent demands of several of 
the States, embodied in the 10th and 11th Amendments to the 
Constitution. But it deserves especial consideration just now, 



m 

that New York and two other States, Virginia and (when at 
length she consented to enter the Union) Rhode Island, express- 
ly stipulated the right of the people to resume the powers dele- 
gated in this Constitution to the General Government. Virginia 
declared: "The powers granted under this Constitution, being 
derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by 
them, whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury." 
New York : "The powers of the government may be re-assumed 
by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their 
happiness." Rhode Island: "The powers of government may 
be resumed by the people whensoever it may become necessary 
to their happiness." 

The circumstances make it clear who "the people" are that 
can "resume" their grants of power. The only people that ever 
granted are the people of each State, acting separately, in their 
State Conventions. The preceding question: Shall Virginia 
adopt or reject ? of itself explains all. Had the State Conven- 
tion of either of these States refused to ratify, that State would 
have remained out of the Union, as indeed Rhode Island did 
remain out for fifteen months, after the eleven had set up the 
new government. The argument of Madison, altogether com- 
posed of undeniable facts, completely silenced Henry's difficulty 
on that point. But, in the very paragraph in which New York 
provides for the resumption of her delegated powers, as above 
mentioned, she aptly defines her own conception of "the people," 
who can recall the grants by saying: "Every power, jurisdiction, 
and right which is not by said Constitution clearly delegated to 
the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the 
government thereof, remains to the people of the several 
States, or to their respective State Governments, to whom they 
may have granted the same." These words define "the people" 
who can resume the grants. They are the only people who ever 
have delegated power: for, as before shown, the Philadelphia Con- 
vention could delegate nothing whatever. It could only recom- 
mend that such action be taken by the States respectively. 

Now, it was in full view of such explanations as had silenced 
the objections advanced by Patrick Henry and others about 



37 



"We the people," that John Marshall, afterwards the great Chief 
Justice of the United States, observed in the Virginia Conven- 
tion, of which he was a member, replying to further objections 
against the liability of the abuse of its powers by the General 
Government : 

"We are threatened with the loss of our liberties by the possible abuse 
of power, notwithstanding' the maxim, that those who give may take 
away. It is the people that give the power, and can take it back. What 
shall restrain them? They are the masters who give it, and of whom 
their servants hold it." — Ell. Deb., Vol. III., p. 233, cited by Stephens. 

It was the people of Virginia that were then discussing whether 
or not they would "give." Art. VII. of the proposed Constitution 
provided for setting up the new government whenever so many 
as nine of the thirteen States should ratify, and it was to be com- 
posed "between the States so ratifying," not between the recu- 
sants and the ratifying States alike. 

According to these clauses, then, the resumption provided for 
was to be exercised by States assembled in Conventions. The re- 
serve of power lies with theyn — so says New York. Of course, 
the law of reciprocity extends the same discretion to their co- 
equal associates, the other States. 

Another fact bearing upon this question, Who are the parties 
to the contract ? Eleven States, having ratified the Constitution, 
the amended form of government was set up between them, 
March 4th, 1789, Washington being unanimously chosen Presi- 
dent. This was about one and a half years after the rising of 
the Philadelphia Convention, Sept. 17th., 1787. But two of the 
States had refused to ratify. They accordingly formed no part 
of the new Union, but remained by themselves, as separate, in- 
dependent political bodies — North Carolina for nine months, 
Rhode Island for fifteen. They were friendly, but foreign powers. 
And as such Rhode Island formally entered into correspondence 
with "the eleven United States," as she correctly styles them, in 
the curious paper copied by Mr. Davis, "Rise and Fall," Vol. 
I., pp. 112, 113. 

In all this there is no place found for the ratification of "the 
people in the aggregate." 



38 

Thus, when the calcium lights of history are turned fully upon 
them, the speculative notions and verbal criticisms embodied in 
Webster's wonderful speech "On the Constitution," are shown to 
be mere optical illusions and unsubstantial shadows — the ^•idola 
specm' of Lord Bacon. Mr. Calhoun had no difficulty in vin- 
dicating, by the history, the strict propriety of all the terras 
against which his miglity antagonist had trained his heaviest 
guns. The word '■'■compact,'' as applicable to the Constitution, 
and ^'■accede,'" (whether or not it be the correlate of secede^ as 
Webster thought it,) are found in the writings of Washington, 
and others who helped to frame the instrument. And the term 
'■'Constitution,'' upon which Webster laid so much stress, as af- 
fording the crucial test for clearly discriminating between the old 
"Articles of Confederation" and the plan proposed by the Con- 
vention of 1787, is shown to have been as freely applied by the 
fathers to the former as to the latter. The resolution of Con- 
gress, advising the revision, expressly terms the "Articles" a 
'■'•Federal Constitution." The enactments of the twelve States 
that consented to take part in the General Convention, are 
thickly sown with the very word "Constitution," as applied the 
old system. The massive links of the elaborately wrought chain 
crumble into dust at the touch of Calhoun's hand. And, he was 
fully warranted in holding Webster to the damaging admissions 
which he had made, when he acknowledged that the older system 
was a "league" of independent States. 

It is no impeachment of Webster's splendid abilities, when we 
thus seek to correct his conceptions of the Constitution by ap- 
pealing to the testimony of the men who made it. The era of 
the Revolution might boast of a constellation of statesmen 
worthy to inaugurate a new epoch in human government. Jef- 
ferson, Madison, and Hamilton have, as statesmen, had no su- 
periors in American history. And surely they would be better 
able to interpret their own words and to declare their own inten- 
tions than even a Webster could be. 

The errors of such a mind might furnish a striking moral to 
that philosophy which enjoins caution and humility upon all men. 
"I remember" — so Mr. Webster is reported assaying — "to have 



39 

heard Chief Justice Marshall ask counsel, who was insisting upon 
the authority of an act of legislation, Hf lie thought an act of 
legishition could create or destroy a fact, or change the truth of 
history?' 'Would it alter the fact.' he said, 'if a legislature 
should solemnly enact that Mr. Hume never wrote the History 
of England ?' " The argument as to the limits set to human 
power finds illustration in the Senator's attempts to expound the 
Constitution so as to make it accord with his own doctrine of a 
consolidated government into which the sovereignties of the States 
had been merged. Mr. Webster once said, perhaps with some- 
thing of rhetorical exaggeration, that the war of the Revolution 
■was fought upon a ^'"preamble" — thereby meaning the preamble 
to the Boston Port Bill, in which George III. claimed the right 
to tax the Colonies at his own pleasure. Alas ! it is probably 
nearer to the truth that Mr. Webster, beyond all others, helped 
to inaugurate a far more bloody war, in which hundreds of thou- 
sands of his countrymen were to perish. And his misconstruc- 
tion of the words, "We the people of the United States," in a 
"preamble," was a potent element in the direful result. Like 
the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus, his words — great man and 
true patriot though he was — have borne a harvest of violence 
and blood. 

Webster lived to grow wiser. Mr. Stephens sustains this po- 
sition by ample testimony, as it seems to me. No formal rejoin- 
der to Calhoun's reply was attempted by Webster. And, though 
a vote was not reached upon the question in debate between 
them in 1833, yet, in 1838, Calhoun was able to carry all his 
positions by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. In 1839, Webster 
is found arguing before the Supreme Court upon Calhoun's prin- 
ciples rather than those held by him in 1830-3. And in 1851, 
at Capon Springs, Va., speaking to the toast, ^^The union of the 
States," he freely applies the term ^'compact," as explanatory 
of the nature of the Constitution, and even the word '■'■bargain.'' 
"A bargain," he said, " cannot be broken on one side and still 
bind the other side." "If the Northern States," he proceeded, al- 
luding to their passage of the "Personal Liberty Bills," "refuse 
wilfully and deliberately to carry into effect that part of the 



40 



Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and 
Congress provide no remedy, the South would be no longer 
bound to observe the compact.'' 

Five years later — 1856 — the Senate confessed in its solemn 
appeal to the recusant States, that Congress, without their aid, 
could provide no effective remedy. But ere that announcement 
was made, Daniel Webster had passed away, like his great asso- 
ciates Chiy and Calhoun. We cannot say, therefore, what course 
he would have advised, if he had been alive in 1860. The fact 
of a great change of opinion, however, is made clear by Mr. 
Stephens. Unfortunately for the country, Webster's influence 
was chiefly exerted while he held the opinions announced in 
1830-3. And so it is, to borrow the words of the greatest of 
poets : 

"The evil that men do lives a^ter them ; 
The good is oft interred with their bones." 

It only remains that we examine in this cursory manner what 
provision, if any, appears in the new Constitution for the sur- 
render by the States of their "'sovereignty, freedom, and inde- 
pendence," as asserted for them in the first Constitution, and 
admitted by Mr. Webster; and, having done this, to see wherein, 
if at all, authority is given to the General Government to coerce 
a State. 

So far as Webster himself is concerned, it would seem that he 
is on our side, on the principle of "a good and necessary infer- 
ence." For, acknowledging candidly that the States came out 
of the old Union under the "Articles of Confederation," as inde- 
pendent political bodies that had been united by a league, he 
also dwelt at another time upon the fact that nothing whatever is 
said in the Constitution about sovereignty. Now, when these 
two facts — and such they are, beyond a doubt — are brought to- 
gether under the Tenth Amendment, what follows of necessity? 
That portion of the Constitution, be it remembered, reads thus : 

'•'■The powers not delegated, to the United States by the Constitution, nor 
prohibited by it to the iSluus, are reserved to the States respectively, or 
to the people." 



41 

Major — All powers not delegated to tlie United States, etc., 
are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. 

Minor — But nothing whatever being said about sovereignty, 
which they certainly possessed before forming this Constitution, 
it is not delegated to the United States. 

Therefore — Sovereignty is reserved to the States respectively, 
or to the people. 

But, as Mr. Davis observes, Webster seems to have had a sort 
of double obscuration of vision with regard to the governments 
(General and State) and the people of a State in Convention as- 
sembled. All of our American governments, as he earnestly 
states the case, are limited to the exercise of certain powers dele- 
gated to them. None of them, therefore, is sovereign. But 
from this it does not follow, as he seems strangely to have im- 
agined, that the term "sovereign," or "sovereignty," borrowed 
from the feudal times, as he says, is totally inapplicable to our 
system. In this he is followed by Motley. Both of them over- 
look the fundamental difference between the delegated powers of 
a government and the original undelegated powers of the sove- 
reign PEOPLE. This people, speaking in their Conventions, is 
the fountain of all delegated powers of the governments, under 
our system. And in denying, or seeming to deny, the applica- 
bility of this title to such a people, Mr. Webster shot wide of the 
mark. For not only does Article II. of the old Confederation 
meet him with a square denial, by applying the very word 
"sovereignty" to the States, but, as Mr. Davis observes, the lan- 
guage of the fathers is thickly sown with the term, showing that 
they had deliberately appropriated the term, feudal though it 
Avas in its origin. Mr. Davis gives the language of the people of 
Massachusetts, assembled in Convention to frame her Consti- 
tution : 

"The people inhabititif; the territory formerly called the Province of 
Massachusetts Bay, do hereby solemnly and mutually agree with each 
other to form themselves into a free, sovereign, and independent body 
politic, or State, by the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." 

So speaks the State which was so ably represented by Web- 
ster ; the birth-place, too, of the historian of the Dutch Repub- 
lic. Probably neither had read the testimony. 



4-2 



Alexander Hamilton ("Federalist," No. LXXI.), speaking of 
the exemption of a sovereign from liability to be sued at law, 
save at its own consent, says : "The exemption, as one of the 
attributes of sovereigtttn, is now enjoyed by every State in the 
Union. 

Madison (in the "Federalist," No. XL.) says of the principles 
of the old Confederation: "Do they require that, in the estab- 
lishment of the Constitution, the States shall be regarded as \n- 
die\)ex\^ex\\, sovereigns? They a?-g so regarded by the Constitu- 
tion proposed." 

So also speak Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, Governeur 
Morris, Roger Sherman, and Oliver Ellsworth ; their words being 
cited by Mr. Davis {-'Rise and Fall;' Vol. I., p. 144). They 
certainly have the start of Mr. Webster, and possession, which 
is said to be "nine-tenths" in law, is by Horace, with universal 
assent, put a degree higher : 

^^Usus j^tiiies quern et jus et norma loquendi est,^^ 

If now, in the light of all these testimonies, you will apply 
the canon of the Constitution, as found in the Tenth Amendment, 
where is sovereignty lodged but with the people of an organised 
State, who can make and unmake governments ; who can dele- 
gate powers and recall them ? 

This Amendment, be it remembered, was introduced on the 
demand of many of the States, jealously regarding the possible 
encroachments of the General Government. And if any of us 
can entertain a doubt whether "the people" of that amendment 
be those of "the States respectively," or those of the whole ter- 
ritory en masse, let him examine the phraseology of New York, 
as she makes the adoption of this \erj provision the condition of 
her ratification. There he will see the people of a State dis- 
criminated from the State Government, to which the people may 
have delegated a portion of their powers, to be exercised for their 
good. 

Applying the same test to the question of coercing a State, in 
its political capacity, we have but to ask, Where does the Con- 
stitution delegate any such power to the General Government f 



43 

Early in the Convention of 1787 it was proposed that such 
power be given to the General Government by the States, each 
in its own Convention, the General Convention at Philadelphia 
having, as we have seen, power to recomme.nd only. The motion 
was made that the General Government have power '•'•to call 
out, the forces of the Union against any member of the Union 
failing to fulfil its duties tmder the Articles thereof." This 
was coercion, pure and simple. 

Now, what reception was accorded to this proposition? Mr. 
Madison observed that "a union of the States containing such 
an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The 
use offeree against a State would look more like a declaration of 
war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be 
considered by the party attacked as the dissolution of all previous 
compacts by which it might be bound. He hoped that such a 
system might be framed as might render this recourse unneces- 
sary, and moved that the clause be postponed." This was adopt- 
ed nem. con., that is, none opposing. Every such proposition 
subsequently introduced, or hinted, met the same fate. 

Oliver Ellsworth, an influential member of the General Con- 
vention, speaking afterwards as a member of the Connecticut 
State Convention, said : 

"This Constitution does not attempt to coerce sovereign bodies, States, 
in their political capacity. No coercion is applicable to such bodies but 
that of an armed force. If we should attempt to execute the laws of the 
Union by sending an armed force against a delinquent State, it would 
involve the good and bad, the innocent and guilty, in the same calami- 
ty."— Elliott's Debates, Vol. II., p. 199, cited by Mr. Davis. 

Mr. Hamilton, in the Convention of New York, declared: 
"To coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever de- 
vised What a picture does this idea present to our view ? A 

complying State at war with a non-complying State : Congress marching 

the troops of one State into the bosom of another Here is a 

nation at war with itself. Can any reasonable man be well disposed to- 
ward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of 
supporting itself — a government which can exist only by the sword ? 

But can we believe that one State will ever suffer itself to be 

used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream — it is impos- 
sible."— Elliott's Debates, Vol. II.. pp. 232-3, cited by Mr. Davie. "Rise 
and Fall," Vol. I., p. 178. 



44 



But alas for us! that we should have seen this ugly dream a 
dreadful reality. The "Empire State" suffered herself to be made 
"an instrument ofcoercion," when she forsook the counsels of 
her greatest statesman, centralist though he was, for the devious 
ways of Wm. H. Seward. 

In the Convention of Virginia, that same Edmund Randolph 
who at Phila<lelphia had moved the adoption of a "National gov- 
ernment," thus expressed himself: 

"What species of military coercion could the General Government 
adopt for the enforcement of obedience to its demands? Either an 
army sent into the heart of a delinquent State, or blockinf^ up its ports. 
Have we lived to this, then, that in order to suppress and exclude 
tyranny, it is necessary to render the most affectionate friends the most 
bitter enemies, set the father against the son, and make the brother 
slay the brother? Is this the happy expedient that is to preserve lib- 
erty? Will it not destroy it? If an army be once introduced to force 
us, if once marched into Virginia, figure to yourselves what the dread- 
ful consequences will be ; the most lamentable civil war must ensue." — 
Ell. Deb., Vol. III., p. 117, as cited in "Kise and Fall," pp. 178-9. 

Now, in the light of such an array of testimony by the great 
and good men who framed this Constitution, men of various shades 
of political opinion, let us again ask where is the power delegated 
by the States to this limited General Government, for employing 
force against a State, "in its political capacity?" The bond 
reads: 

'■'■The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor 
prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the States respectively , or to the 
people.''' 

And as moving in this very line of construction, though not 
expressly naming military coercion, let us read the 11th Amend- 
ment : 

"■The Judicial powers of the United States shall not be construed to ex- 
tend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of 
the United States by citizens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of 
any Foreign Stated 

If they may not be judicially coerced, how much more not by 
war! 

The procedure of the States in the very act of "ordaining and 



establishing" the new Constitution, finds a place in this exposition. 
Art. VII. made express provision, as we have seen, for the seces- 
sion of any nine of the thirteen States in order that they might 
establish the new government. And accordingly, when after 
some delay, eleven of them had one by one, withdrawn and re- 
united, the new government was set up by the election of Wash- 
ington to be the President. Two of the thirteen States declined 
to take part in this action, and remained, one for nine months, the 
other for fifteen, entirely separate from the new government — 
Rhode Island taking occasion meanwhile to address a note to 
"the eleven United States," the note being received with the 
formalities usual to such foreign correspondence. Now, mark 
the argument suggested by Mr. Davis: Either the eleven, acting 
one by one, seceded frovi the two, or else the two, declining to fol- 
low them, seceded from the eleven. In either case there was an 
act of secession, which ivas deliberately provided for in the Con- 
stitution itself. 

We have heard Madison's justification of this secession on the 
double ground of necessary exercise of inherent power, (which is 
sovereign,) and of violations of the ^federal pact,'' which left all 
parties to it free to do as they choose. Madison was perfectly 
consistent in applying his doctrine of the rights of the States to 
the case of Virginia's protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts 
of Congress. His elaborate "Report" to the General Assembly 
of his State in 1799-1800, shows him to have held the very prin- 
ciples upon which we acted in 1860. Jefferson had taken the same 
ground in the "Kentucky Resolution," drafted by him in 1798. 
[See App. D. and E. to Vol. I. of Stepliens' "Constitutional 
View of the War," etc.] The "Report" made a sensation in that 
day, and drew forth angry remonstrances. But Mr. Stephens 
notes the significant fact that each of those great Virginians was 
seated for two terms in the Executive Chair which Washington 
had filled before them. 

Time fails us to consider now the concurrent opinions of many 
great and good men in New England. You will find ample evi- 
dence of this in Mr. Davis and Mr. Stephens. Of these, the 
action of the Hartford Convention deserves special notice. They, 



4G 



indeed, incurred unnecessary odium by making a move toward 
dismemberment in the very midst of a great war with England. 
But, barring this feature of their action, they were representa- 
tive men of high character. 

The State of Massachusetts, too, has a special record bearing 
on the doctrine of States' Rights and the lawfulness of Secession. 
She was first to move for the Hartford Convention in 1814. 
When the Louisiana purchase had been effected in 1803, she 
threatened to withdraw. And in 1844 by solemn act of the Leg- 
islature she again declared that "The project of the annexation 
of Texas, unless arrested on the threshold, may drive the States 
into a dissolution of the Union." And on the 2"2d of February, 
1845, she passed the following resolution : "And as the powers 
of legislation granted in the Constitution of the United States to 
Congress, do not embrace the case of the admission of a foreign 
State, or foreign territory, by legislation, into the Union, such 
an act of admission would have no binding force whatever on the 
people of Massachusetts" — cited by Mr. Stephens, "Const. 
View of the War," etc.. Vol. I., pp. 510,511. The difference, 
as Mr. Davis aptly says, between ourselves and them is that 
while they were content with asserting their right, we acted on 
ours. 

Mr. Stephens, however, calls our attention to the curious fact 
that the General Government had, for many years prior to 1861, 
itself inculcated the doctrine of Secession, by having its agents, 
the instructors of the Military Academy at West Point, use, as 
a text-book in the classes, Rawle's Exposition of the Constitution, 
which goes to the whole length of showing just how the solemn 
step should, in case of necessity, betaken. {Ibid., p. 505.) Hence 
if Davis, Lee, Johnston, and their associates, sinned in holding 
that the secession of their States, being a lawful act, carried them 
out of the Union, they can po'nt to their instructions at West 
Point and say: We were so taught by authority of the General 
Government. 

Webster, indeed, seems to have imagined that in his famous 
speech on the Constitution, he had effectuall}'' barred the door 
against the alleged right of secession, by showing that it could 



4T 



never be put into exercise without perjury. Each member of a 
-State Leo;islature, he said, all Judges and other officers, being 
required to take oath to observe the Constitution of the United 
States, are thereby bound to perform all duties enjoined upon 
them by the Constitution. The elections for President, Senators, 
etc., mui>t therefore occur as ordered by the Cnstitution. State 
officials, being constrained by their oath, have no choice but to 
see it done. And so the government must go on in perpetuo. 
Mr. Davis (as also Mr. Stephens) very correctly exposes the 
double confusion of thought betrayed by this argument of the 
great orator — the confounding of the limited powers of a 
State government with the unlimited sovereignty of the people 
thereof, acting in their conventions; also the delegated powers of 
the General Government with the same sovereignty. Now it 
may be very safely, so far as we are concerned, conceded that 
Webster's argument is conclusive as to the discretion of a State 
government, though in this Hamilton is against him. But it does 
not, by any means, follow that the sovereign jjeople are thereby 
estopped. The power which delegates is competent to recall, as 
in all unlimited partnerships. The citizen became connected 
with the General Government solely through the act of his State. 
So long as his State continues to ratify the compact, so long he 
is bound thereby. But his sovereign having formally annulled 
the compact, the subject is free from it. The act by which your 
sovereign, the State, speaking in her convention, repealed her 
former ratifieation of that compact was the exercise of an un- 
delegated right — a right, therefore, which, by the express language 
of the Tenth Amendment, is reserved '•''to the States respectively, or 
to the people." The Constitution distinguishes clearly between 
the two forms of power, each of which is in popular language 
termed a "State" — the delegated powers of the governrnent, and the 
original fountain, the peojjle. The distinction had been clearly 
made in the Philadelphia Convention, and on that distinction, 
Art VII. had been based. 

When, therefore, my comrades, you obeyed the voice of your 
sovereign State in leaving the Union, you acted in strict con- 
formity to law : you kept your faith with every man. And when, 



48 

further, you took up arms to defend your sovereign, you did no 
more than your bounden duty. The bloody war was, on your 
part, one of self-defence. You asked only to be let alone in the 
discharge of that duty. Brothers of the Sixth Regiment ! look 
upon that faded, tattered banner, that floats above our heads, 
preserved to us by the accident of being already too old for ser- 
vice when we surrendered our arms at Appomattox. A "con- 
quered banner," it may be called, because it was overwhelmed by 
tenfold odds. I see upon it the names of "Williamsburg," 
"Seven Pines," "Gaines' Mill," "Frazier's Farm," "Second 
Manassas," and "Sharpsburg." I see it to be rent with hostile 
shot. Some dark stains may be on its folds too. But, com- 
rades, they are the sacred drops of patriot blood, which hallow, 
but cannot defile. There is no spot of dishonor upon thee, thou 
emblem of a fallen, but upright people, of a cause "lost," so far as 
the bloody arbitrament of the sword could avail it, but dear to 
our saddened hearts as the memory of a buried love. Dear old 
banner! What memories it recalls of strong hands that bore it 
amid the crash and roar of battle, until they relaxed in the pangs 
of dissolution — of eyes that strained after it, as it floated amid 
eddying clouds of smoke, until the films of death blotted it out ! 
Our brave comrades ! 

"On Fame's eternal canipin<i-i;vound, 

Their silent tents are spread ; 
And glory guards, with solemn round, 
The bivouac of the dead." 

In the name of history, whose ample testimony is before you ; 
in the name of the fathers of the Republic, Avhose words have 
been cited; in the name of the Constitution, which they framed, 
and have interpreted for us, I declare, impugn it who will, that 
the}' died, true men, valiant warriors, and devoted patriots, mar- 
tyrs in the defence of truth and right ! 

Having thus, as I humbly claim, sliown that no taint of dis- 
honor attaches to our Association, let me, in conclusion, make a 
few suggestions relating to our duties as Southern soldiers and 
as American citizens. 

And, first, lot me say that we, of all men, need to cultivate 
the virtues of patience and chariti/ towards those who differ 
from us. T have proved that in all your controversy with our 



41) 



Northern brethren, you were in the right, as to moral principle 
and political privileges. But you know that a good cause can be 
ruined by the spirit and temper in which it is defended. In 
my heart I feel that herein lay one of our chief defects in days 
gone by. We allowed oui'selves to become too much embittered 
by their conduct. We learned to dislike, and then to despise, our 
opponents. The land was filled with boasts of what we would 
do. Such feelings are sure to prove bad counsellors. It is not 
very safe to underrate one's enemy and overrate one's self. This 
we did to a great degree. And I have often thought of the wise 
man's saying : "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty 
look before a fall." Tiiis scornful feeling helped us to jeopard- 
ise our just cause, by rushing unprepared into the war. In vain 
sagacious men like Mr. Davis and Mr. Stephens cautioned us of 
the danger. We said fhere would be no war. We calleil such 
as they, "too slow." Had we been a little less confident, had we 
respected other men's determination and fighting qualities, had 
we cautiously armed ourselves beforehand with the best weapons 
to be found in the world, where would we have stood to-day? 
W^e would have been free and victorious. Let us learn to respect 
other people's manhood as well as our own. They have wronged 
us deeply. But it may be said of tiiem — at least of the great mass 
of the Northern people — as the great Apostle said of himself: 
"They did it ignorantly through unbelief." They proved their 
sincerity by their Aviliingness to suffer. Let us, then, respect 
those convictions, however erroneously founded we may know 
them to be. Let us reverence their manhood, and try to be glad 
that they have never passed through such agonies as defeat and 
"reconstruction" brought to us. Our provocation was great, and 
it is great now. I remember the sluices of calumny and abuse. 
My blood will boil yet when I see it in print. Success does not 
always make people lovely, especially toward such as they may 
dislike and, perhaps, somewhat fear. We have had a plenty of 
such treatment to bear. But if patience, self-control, and charity 
for others, wore needful for us when we were stronj;, how much 
more so now, in our defeat ! We claim to be witnesses for a 
great principle — the right of local self-government; for the di- 
4 



:)<! 



vision of power, as a protection against the corruptions which 
have ever developed from centralisation in other republics. The 
taint has shown itself fearfully in our own country. The record 
testifies that the fathers of the Republic held this principle to be 
the corner-stone of our institutions. With one voice the great 
men of that day assent to the declaration of Alexander Hamil- 
ton, when in the New York Convention, he said, as you have 
already heard ; "TVjg States can never lose their powers till the 
ivhole people of America are robbed of their liberties. These 
must go together ; they must support each other, or tneet one com- 
mon fate." 

So spake he whom Mr. Davis with good reason seems to regard 
as the greatest intellect of his age, though it abounded in great 
men. The signs of the times seem to give to his words some- 
thing of the forecast of prophecy. As the territory is developed, 
wealth will increase at an ever-accelerating speed, and with it 
the temptation to, and the ready means of, that political corrup- 
tion which ruined Rome, as it had Babylon, Persia, and Alexan- 
der's successors. The hope for us seems to lie in a clearly 
defined division of powers, in the right of States to oppose an 
effectual check to the absorption into itself by the General Gov- 
ernment of functions not delegated to it by the original compact. 
We can no longer battle for the heritage. War is no longer 
dreamed of as a remedy by sane men among us. We must be 
content to plead before the better judgment of the majority. It 
is their interest as well as ours. Time is a great reconciler. The 
soft w^atcr-drop wears away the hard stone. We will probably be 
treated to a dose of scorn, if we claim to be in the right. Some 
persons think we should be very humble and grateful that Ave are 
allowed to live at all. But no matter. Let t!iem feel so, if they 
will. Let us hold fast to the truth, and testify as we have op- 
portunity. The great writers of the South are doing it nobly. 
There is no telling what changes can be wrought by fidelity to 
our convictions. Think what the Abolitionists accomplished by 
unswerving adhesion to their notions of right. They were 
despised, they were in the minority, but they triumphed. See 
the influence of Mr. Calhoun's fidelity upon the mind of his 



51 



noble antagonist. See Mr. Webster, upon the most solemn oc- 
casions, reverting to the very positions which he had challenged, 
and using the very words to which he so bitterly objected. In 
patience we possess our souls. Truth is a mighty power. It 
proved itself so on two great occasions in American history be- 
fore our trouble culminated. The aggressions of the Federal 
Government were, as Mr. Stephens shows, checked by the firm 
opposition of Virginia, led by Jefferson and Madison, about the 
opening of this century. They were checked again, as he thinks, 
by Calhoun, between 1830 and 1840. Let truth be heard again ; 
and let the voices of her witnesses be gentle and full of good-will 
to all men. If the principle Avas worth risking our lives for, as 
we believed. Jet us bide our time, and it may yet assert itself in 
the convictions of the American people. In any event, we can 
but do our duty. 

Next, let me put in a kind word for the children of Africa, 
whose fate has been so strangely blended with ours. They were, 
as all admit, the best servants in the world under the old arrange- 
ment. We went off to the war, leaving aged parents, defence- 
less wives and little ones, largely dependent on them. They 
were wonderfully faithful to the trust. I have never heard of a 
single instance of deliberate cruelty on their part toward the 
thousands who were in their power. We had a number of them 
with us in camp. They were faithful and kind to us. Many a 
roan's life was saved on the battle-field and in the hospital by 
the fidelity of his black servant. Not one of those attached to 
our Regiment, so far as I know, ever deserted his master for 
freedom in the enemy's camp. I am glad to see many of them 
here among us to-day. I am glad to know that their names 
have been enrolled along with ours in the Survivors' Association, 
and that they are wearing the badges of their old masters' com- 
panies. Comrades, these good-natured colored men have been 
more sinned against than sinning. Brought hither from the 
wilds of Africa by the greed of Avhite men, chiefly from old En- 
gland and New England, without their own choice, they have 
been set free, and enfranchised, without seeking it. They must be 
either more or less than human to have escaped all the tempta- 



52 

tions put in thoir way. It was impossible that their simple minds 
shoiikl fail to be greatly disturbed by such sud<len and surprising 
changes. And as they have been all along used as the ""cat's paw" 
to serve the partisan ends of white men, so they came very near 
being used by carpet-baggers and other thieves to destroy whnt- 
ever had been saved from the wreck of the war. But they were 
hardly more conscious of the liorrible evils wrought by their votes, 
than the little child is of burning down his father's house, while 
he played with the fire. Putting myself, as far as I can into his 
place, I very much doubt whether the more determined white 
race of the North or the South would have done as well. Let 
us be patient with our black brother. It has pleased a good 
Providence to make us his greatest benefactors in the past. 
While others have tampered with his safety in the accomplish- 
ment of selfish ends, or in the exercise of sentimental philanthropy, 
God has made his rclanons to us to be his greatest blessing. 
They came to us debased savages, the naked worshippers of fe- 
tiches, the dupes of Obi-men, and of Gre-gre women, some of them 
being eaters of human flesh. Under our tuition they were taught 
the habits of order, decency, ai-id industry. Under us they for- 
sook their bestial idolatry. Ilundre<ls of thousands of them, 
more, indeed, than have been won to Christ on heathen ground 
by all the devoted missionaries of Christendom, have become 
sincere worshippers of the God of heaven. We did not do for 
them, as our bondmen, all that we ought. We were greatly hin- 
dered by the intermeddling of conceited busy-bodies. But we 
might have done more. Let it not be said that our hearts are 
turned to stone by evil circumstances. 

First of all, we must he Just to them. I know that many among 
us have been tempted by the fact that they once were our bond- 
men, and were wrongfully taken away from us. But remember, 
we have consented to the will of our conquerors. It is so in the 
record. We have solemtd} and deliberately said. They shall be 
free. Let us not forswear ourselves. Let us promise fair wages, 
and then pay what Ave promise, and rvhen we promise. This is 
God's law. He says: "The wages of him that is hired shall not 
abide with thee all night, until the morning." He shall not be 



58 



kept waiting even one night after it is due. If any body must go 
unpaid for a Avliile, let him wait that can best aiford it, not the 
poor laboring man. 

And, then, be kind to the black man in his troubles and afflic- 
tions. Visit him in his sickness and sorrow, as Christ tells you 
to do. They are full of sympathy when we are in trouble. I 
never had a great grief in my home that they did not weep with 
me. 

Help him to guard the sanctity of his humble home, to protect 
the character of his wife and daughter. 

You know far more than he does. Give him a kind word of 
friendly counsel, Avhen he is in the mood to receive it. Do him 
a favor Avhenever you see the chance. I do not see why strangers 
should come from a distance to teach our colored peasantry. 
We taught them when we owned them. Many of our most gifted 
ministers spent their lives preaching to them. My first lessons 
were received in my father's house along with the colored servants. 
The first work I ever did, even before I was your Chaplain, was 
to teach a Sunday-school of colored people. Our great hero, 
Stonewall Jackson, for years taught a colored Sunday-school in 
Lexington, Va. 

Again, let me urge upon every Confederate veteran, the duty 
of building up the waste places of our beloved South. One of 
the greatest things that Macaulay records of Cromwell's invinci- 
ble old "Ironsides," is, that when peace came, if you saw a grave- 
lookino; man who was a little more ener'^etic and industrious than 
his neighbors, you might be sure he was one of Oliver's old sol- 
diers. Let us be like them. We have bonds of sympathy with 
them. For after their mighty leader had been laid under the 
sod, the bloody beastly Stuarts came back, and with them such 
corruptions as are rarely seen outside of pandemonium. But 
they were patient and true, until, by and by, the Prince of 
Orange came, and libertv was forever established. Belike them ; 
and it may be that, by and by, our countrymen at the North will 
come to our help, and undo, as far as they can, the evil which 
they have done. 

Our beloved commander set us the example in this, as in every- 



o4 

thing else that is manly and noble. During the war, friends of 
his family secretly made up the funds with which to buy a home 
in Richmond for his venerable wife, and her daugliters, driven, 
as we all know, from their ample possessions which they had in- 
herited in part from George Washington. But when he heard 
of it, he assured them that such a course would pain him deeply — 
that nothing could induce him to think of accepting it. If any 
had more than they required, let them, he suggested, give it to 
the suffering soldiers, or donate it for the defence of the country. 
When, in the universal scarcity of the war, luxuries were pressed 
upon him, he said : ''Send these things to my men in the hos- 
pitals." And when the war had ceased, he Avas offered a com- 
mercial position which guaranteed to him a salary of $10,000 
per annum, he declined it, saying : '*I cannot earn the money in 
a business which I have never mastered." "Yes ; but General," 
they said, "we don't wish you to loork. Your name will bring 
us the custom, which will pay your salary." "If that be so," was 
his reply, "I cannot afford to become responsible to those who 
would trust to my management, unless I knew exactly how to 
protect their interests." And so he preferred to accept a small 
salary as an instructor of our boys. How proud, my comrades, 
we should be that General Lee did not fall under the censure of 
Holy Writ, when it says: "The king by judgment establisheth 
the land; hut he that reoeiveth gifts overthrotveth it." 

Improve your methods of farming. Bring back to their pris- 
tine fertility these old red hill-sides, all riven and torn by bad 
tillage. They have in them the elements that will insure your 
success, if only you will do it wisely and patiently. 

Do this good work for your own children. Said a wealthy manu- 
facturer the other day to a friend of mine : "I hope your people 
in the South will take warning by us here in Pennsylvania. 
Fifty years ago much of our land had been exhausted, as yours 
is, and it was sold at five or six dollars an acre. Strangers came 
in and bought it. They cultivated it wisely, and now you could 
not buy that land for $100 an acre." 

Build cotton-mills, and be independent. I am glad to see you 
are doino; so. The United States Census shows that mills in the 



00 



South average 22| per centum on investments. Be prudent as 
\vell as energetic. You have all the needed water-power ; 3'ou 
have the climate; you can save cost of transportation both Avays 
and handling. Be independent, ami get back some of the wealth 
which Protective Tariffs have squeezed out of you. 

When you exercise that solemn responsibility of American 
citizenship — the calling of men to discharge official responsibili- 
ties through your votes — be sure that you call none who cannot 
be trusted. The men Avho stood by you in your troubles are 
those who Avill serve you, not for the "loaves and fishes," but 
for love. 

A real "Union man," one whose judgment and conscience 
having decided against the lawfulness of Secession stood up for 
his own convictions like a man, we can all admire, and, if capa- 
ble, vote for, always provided that we do not thereby sacrifice the 
great principle of local self-government. But the turncoat and 
trimmer is, like Ephraim of old, "unstable as water, and will 
not excel" in any good work. Trust him not. He will betray 
you, whenever it serves his purpose. 

Finally, build upon and cherish your Southern homes. There 
lies the secret of your power. As I have wandered amid the 
splendors of Northern cities, looking at their shipping, their 
factories, massive buildings, and mighty railroad systems, I have 
often said to myself: You excel us far in all that pertains to 
material civilisation. But there is one product in which we have 
never been surpassed by you, and that is the quality of our men 
and ivomen. In that we have held our own, not to say more, 
from George Washington to his heir, Robert Edmond Lee. And 
such men as Albert Sidney Johnston and Stonewall Jackson, at- 
tested, when the trial came, that the old heroic stock had not 
decayed. Let who will gainsay it, I hold that such men are 
formed in God's school — tJie Christian home. And I believe that 
much of that fearful decline in the character and intellect of pub- 
lic men in other parts of the country nowadays, is due to a 
breaking down of that great, primitive, divine institution, more 
essential than either Church or State — i\\Q family. It is a matter 
of pride to me. as a Carolinian, that so soon as you wrenched 



o(i 



jour "Prostrate State" from the avaricious grip of thieves and 
carpet-baggers, you rescinded their divorce hiw, and went bacl< to 
the old colonial record, which says: "Wiiat God has joined to- 
gether, let not man put asunder." The rule thut denies all 
divorce is, perhaps, a little too severe. But infinitely better to 
be that, than to turn marriage into licensed impurity, as is being 
done in parts of the United States to-day. Hold fast to whatever 
is right in your old traditions. Maintain your individuality. 
Don't consent to be absorbed. An eminent gentleman in Boston, 
who has had no hand in throttling the South — and there are 
thousands like him at the North — said to a friend of mine not 
long since: "You are in the right so far ; but the great danger is 
that the South will give way, and loose her individuality.'' It is 
a friendly warning. Let us take it. 

And now, my brothers and comrades, during all the years in 
which I was your minister, you will bear me witness that I never, 
even on one occasion, gave you politics instead of the gospel. I 
adhere to that rule yet, when I undertake to preach. But to- 
day, I am speaking as a citizen and Southern soldier, not as a 
minister of the gospel. But I cannot sit down until I add one 
word of the old sort : May Almighty God bless you all, now and 
forever more ! 



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